sailing casita

Over the past 12 or so years that we have been boating we have lost a number of things overboard. We have spent most of that time on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers of Oregon, and the waters of the San Francisco Bay area, including the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. These waters are generally unfavorable to retrieving anything from the bottom due to some combination of being murky, cold, deep, or having a strong current. Fortunately we have never dropped anything overboard that we couldn’t live without.

I’m sure that we have forgotten many items we’ve lost but here are some that we remember:

• A Snap On allen wrench – this was our first overboard loss! We were installing a grill on ‘Imi Loa’s cockpit rail when the wrench went overboard. We both looked at the spot where it went into the cold, swift, murky river and thought “huh, I guess we aren’t getting that back”.
• A dodger strut – we were installing our new Iverson dodger frame on ‘Imi Loa when one of the windscreen struts came loose and bounced its way overboard. It was rather comical because we both watched in what seemed like slow motion as it bounced on the cabin trunk, then on the side deck before going over the side where it miraculously didn’t go into the water but bounced off the dock back toward the boat (getting our hopes up) before it bounced off the toe rail and then finally went into the water with a splash
• A “Top Snapper” tool – this is a very handy (but not buoyant) tool we use for snapping and unsnapping hard to get to dodger and enclosure snaps. We were removing enclosure panels on our way to Angel Island when it went over in 50 feet or so of water and made a very final sounding kerplunk
• Part of a SUP rail mount
• A stainless steel part of the life raft mount that Devon made from scratch and was touching up with a final polishing
• A custom made drill guide for the chain plate project
• A grease gun
• A life ring – obviously this floats but it flew off of the stern rail on a boisterous sail across the “slot” & neither of us noticed until we were back at the marina
• A small cockpit cushion – this also floats but we didn’t see it go overboard (it was lost at some point on the way back from the Delta)
• Part of a roll up floor for an inflatable dinghy
• The hinge pin for our Monitor wind vane
• Various nuts, screws, washers, and drill bits
• A variety of food bits while grilling, most recently a marinated cremini mushroom

The list is sure to grow, just part of the experience I suppose!