Ouch ! Crystal Blues suffered mightily in a collision at sea last month, just off the New Jersey coast and we've spent the past six weeks dealing with the aftermath of that incident. While we are physically OK, I can't say the same about our emotions.
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| The Ugly Duck |
She was hit by an errant commercial trawler, the Ugly Duck, that approached from our port side and initially failed to give way. Yes we were under sail, however the guy at the trawler helm eventually decided to accelerate and turn to port, a bad mistake. So we turned to port to cross his stern, which would have been simple, except that 30 seconds later he changed his mind (panicked?) and turned hard to starboard as if to run down our port side. We again corrected, this time to starboard, but it was not to be - in the last few boat lengths the trawler straightened up and collided with our port bow. We had nowhere to go.
In fact they hit us three times - after the vessels fell apart from the first collision she accelerated into us again, and then again a third time - clearly nobody at the helm at that time. I believe the young guy in control panicked and abandoned the helm. It was a massive collision, and a lesser vessel would be at the bottom of the ocean now, however she took the hit and actually kept sailing until we dropped the sails.
