Originally Posted by
alicopter
In 1985, I was having a sabbatical year on my sailing yacht around the Mediterranean Sea and one of my cousins' boyfriend joined me for a couple of months. We had a pretty scary episode in the Genoa Gulf and could not make way from the coast (classic wooden yacht with long keel and force 8 winds to shore... He had been vomiting a good part of the night and we had to drop anchor in a small bay as we could not sail out of it... Engine kaput... The anchor line was as stretched as a guitar chord and he wanted to abandon ship in the tender and go drifting ashore. In the light of a flare, I pointed to him to the lee stating that he would have to land the rubber dinghy on razor sharp rocks and that he would surely die of multiple cuts in two minutes........... He instantly added bowel contents to the already stinking stomac content... just before punching him in the face with such force it shocked me but knocked him out... I'll never forget the face of the SaR officer when he boarded my boat pinching his nose, after four hours of towing us out of trouble!!!!!
It's amazing the **** that pilots get into when outside of the cockpit, and how they don't exhibit the same risk aversion they do when in the cockpit. Sailing, driving, motorcycling, skiing, etc., etc. Just goes to show you that the old risk-taking gene needs an outlet somewhere!