Question What Are Your Real Life Sailing Stories?

Solomon Helmfitte

Solomon Helmfitte

Notorious Pirate
Here we are a bunch of Pirates, sailors of the deep briny!

I've wondered at times how many of us have ever been on a ship or boat, or even seen the sea!

We live in different places and for many the sea is thousands of kilometers away, here in New Zealand it's always a few miles away! ( a couple of hundred at the most)

So what's your sea shanty? (While we be a waiting)

Have you ever seen the sea? Been on a boat, ship or yacht? What was your most memorable experience, or desires...

Mine was sailing into the Bermuda Triangle in '77 as a 10 year old boy, I'd been plotting our course everyday on our ship (large cargo ship), ever since we left Liverpool UK headed for Bluff NZ (7 weeks), this was the morning I'd been waiting for, The Bermuda Triangle!

I awoke to find our ship surrounded by FOG! It was the only morning in our 7 week journey that I had seen fog at sea, the whole ocean was covered in FOG! (You can imagine, I did a little "Calm down" to myself...lol)

What are your stories of the sea?:eek:
:pirate ship:
 
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That is wild lol, how far were you able to see in front of you? I live in Florida and I have seen the beach plenty! Its about a 30-45min drive! I have been in boats a lot too for fishing, but I've only been way offshore once and it was horrible I caught 1 red snapper and then bam seasickness I left with khaki pants and came back with green ones. So I stay closer to shore where I can see land now.

I love going to saint Augustine though, its the oldest city in the u.s. and has plenty of pirate history. You can actually ride on antique ships and have a reenactment battle with pirates, firing blanks and such. On shore there are huge forts and old buildings, ghost tours are fun but keep an eye out for rage ghosts :)!

Locally we have a shrimp festival and an old pirate ship will dock and pirates will run through the crowd pretending to plunder everything!
 
ZocJonar said:
That is wild lol, how far were you able to see in front of you? I live in Florida and I have seen the beach plenty! Its about a 30-45min drive! I have been in boats a lot too for fishing, but I've only been way offshore once and it was horrible I caught 1 red snapper and then bam seasickness I left with khaki pants and came back with green ones. So I stay closer to shore where I can see land now.

I love going to saint Augustine though, its the oldest city in the u.s. and has plenty of pirate history. You can actually ride on antique ships and have a reenactment battle with pirates, firing blanks and such. On shore there are huge forts and old buildings, ghost tours are fun but keep an eye out for rage ghosts :)!

Locally we have a shrimp festival and an old pirate ship will dock and pirates will run through the crowd pretending to plunder everything!
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Living in Florida sounds fun! I haven't really seen anything to do with real Pirates the only place I've been in the USA was LA in '77 Disneyland, went on the POTC ride... lol

St Augustine sounds amazing too, never heard of it before.

As for the FOG it was very thick, couldn't really see anything around the ship. I feel for you on the sea sick thing, second day out it was bad all day for me! I'll remember to keep an eye out for rage ghosts if I'm ever down your way...;)
:pirate ship:
 
Solomon Helmfitte said:
Living in Florida sounds fun! I haven't really seen anything to do with real Pirates the only place I've been in the USA was LA in '77 Disneyland, went on the POTC ride... lol

St Augustine sounds amazing too, never heard of it before.

As for the FOG it was very thick, couldn't really see anything around the ship. I feel for you on the sea sick thing, second day out it was bad all day for me! I'll remember to keep an eye out for rage ghosts if I'm ever down your way...;)
:pirate ship:
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That is some crazy fog! It is terrifying when you can't tell if you're looking 5 feet or 50 feet away, total whiteout! I am jelly of you though, I always wanted to go to New Zealand. Amazing landscape, Lindsay sterling has done some violin videos there and wasn't Lord of the rings shot there too?
 
Me and a buddy of mine go sailing from time to time on my boat called a snipe. It's very similar to a light sloop, but only around 17 feet long. She capsizes very easily if caught in a broadside sudden gust, so we have to be mindful every minute. In fact, once we were pushed about 15 degrees away from being parallel with the water. The first mate said the look on my face was one of pure doom. I had given up and accepted our fate, but by some stroke of luck, the gust let up and we popped back into an upright position.


Another time, the wind was so dead that after an hour of struggling, a fishing boat of drunkards offered to tow us out of the harbor and into open water. Fortunately, some wind was available out here. However, when it was time to return to port, the wind was blowing us directly away from the destination and it never changed direction. I had to lower the sails (which is a chore in itself) then proceed to "fishtail the rudder" to create a small amount of forward thrust. My buddy was sitting on the bow manning an oar. We continued like that for several hours before making it back. You can imagine the sunburn we suffered by the end of the day.

Sailing is fun, though you are at the mercy of the wind. Pick your days wisely! Lol
 
ZocJonar said:
Lord of the rings shot there too?
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I think that part of it was shot in Tongariro National Park.
Solomon Helmfitte said:
So what's your sea shanty? (While we be a waiting)

Have you ever seen the sea? Been on a boat, ship or yacht? What was your most memorable experience, or desires...

Mine was sailing into the Bermuda Triangle in '77 as a 10 year old boy, I'd been plotting our course everyday on our ship (large container ship), ever since we left Liverpool UK headed for Bluff NZ (7 weeks), this was the morning I'd been waiting for, The Bermuda Triangle!

I awoke to find our ship surrounded by FOG! It was the only morning in our 7 week journey that I had seen fog at sea, the whole ocean was covered in FOG! (You can imagine, I did a little "Calm down" to myself...lol)

What are your stories of the sea?:eek:
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I like your story, but personally I've never been out at sea or on a boat, sadly. I have no stories/tales to tell.
 
I went on a cruise ship to Alaska and Canada last summer, that was exciting.

I've been on a boat to go whale watching, saw a ton of dolphins.

You have to take a boat to sail to Alcatraz which was really fun, not so much the boat trip :p

The first time I ever went on a boat though, it was to go tubing and water skiing on a lake, and I fell out of the boat, and it was terrible lol; it took years for me to ever go on a boat again.

So I don't really go on ships/boats that often, I prefer land :p clearly I'm a terrible pirate, no wonder sailing and cannon were my last things to level ;)
 
I was born and raised in Virginia Beach,USA, was always at the beach and around boats. most my family has been in the navy, so we always went sailing on what they call family night on a navy ship. loved going! Every year I go to the Outer Banks, in North Carolina and stay on the Island Ocracoke where Black Beard had his hide out. there are still ancestors of Black Beard's crew living and have businesses there. If you ever get a chance to go, you should!
 
I had a wild sailing experience on the Finger Lakes. It's more about what happened off the boat. We stopped the boat to eat and a friend and I got in the water on rafts to cool off and sun. So we're on the water, and others were on the boat partying. Then an hour or 2 later I woke up (had fallen asleep on the raft) - hearing my friend screaming. The boat was no where in sight. It wasn't quite dark yet and I could see my friend in the distance. She was off of her raft and it had a hole in it. We had drifted way out and couldn't see a shore. I had to swim to her, the water was pretty wavy. I had to share my raft with her and we didn't know what to do, or which way to go. We were out there maybe an hour holding onto the raft trying to get somewhere as it got wavier and darker. Suddenly out of the blue a boat came out of no where, heading straight for us. All I could think was that they weren't going to see us and run us over. The boat drove right by us and we felt doomed. Then it turned around and came back. One of the guys onboard luckily saw us and had the captain turn around. They saved us! :angel:
 
Punkin Pie said:
I had a wild sailing experience on the Finger Lakes. It's more about what happened off the boat. We stopped the boat to eat and a friend and I got in the water on rafts to cool off and sun. So we're on the water, and others were on the boat partying. Then an hour or 2 later I woke up (had fallen asleep on the raft) - hearing my friend screaming. The boat was no where in sight. It wasn't quite dark yet and I could see my friend in the distance. She was off of her raft and it had a hole in it. We had drifted way out and couldn't see a shore. I had to swim to her, the water was pretty wavy. I had to share my raft with her and we didn't know what to do, or which way to go. We were out there maybe an hour holding onto the raft trying to get somewhere as it got wavier and darker. Suddenly out of the blue a boat came out of no where, heading straight for us. All I could think was that they weren't going to see us and run us over. The boat drove right by us and we felt doomed. Then it turned around and came back. One of the guys onboard luckily saw us and had the captain turn around. They saved us! :angel:
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I looked it up, the largest of the lakes is only 1.7 miles wide on average so you probably would have been fine once you could see the land lol
 
I've driven my grandparents' pontoon boat quite often, yeah not exactly sailing lol. Last year on a crowded lake around here I almost got run into by two people who can't drive boats, I'd hate to see them driving a car... And then I got pulled over by the boat police because my grandpa forgot to renew the boat registration all in the same day :rolleyes:

yeah interesting times
 
Funny I had this 30+ years and only read it a few years back when I thought I should stick it in a frame and hang it up... great read, I guess I've got nothing to worry about from Davy Jones!

Nice picture of Neptune at the top, didn't fit on my scanner. At the time I had an hour or so to get away from the officers and cadets, they found me up the very top of the ship, I got stripped down to my shorts, tied to a chair with a NZ flag and covered in "gunge" from a bucket- while my parents and all the others stood around and laughed :eek: lol, good times... ;)

001.jpg



:pirate ship::sunny:
 
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