Many years ago, when I was about 10-years-old, I took a sailing course over the summer. I suspect my mum secretly hoped I would drown, which I did not. We learned the basics of sailing–how to tack, jibe, etc–in tiny boats called Lasers. The best days were the ones where we practiced turtling. Essentially, that’s when the boat flips over and the occupants scurry to one side, over the gunwale, and onto the hull. Then, as the boat is still rolling, the sailors attempt to continue it all the way through by standing on the centerboard. I probably remember it wrong because I was ten and more interested in Carrie, the girl in the next boat over. In an unrelated lesson, Carrie smashed my fingers with a paddle so hard that I lost six fingernails. She wasn’t playing hard to get. She just hated my 10-year-old advances, which consisted mostly of public ridicule and, if we were adults, what would probably be an assault charge. Why is it that pre-teen flirting involves shoving and hair-yanking?
Anyway, in the video above, these sailors had a bit of a rough go. According to LA County Lifeguards, after strong winds hit the coast, a vessel with four people ran into a few issues at the Redondo Beach pier.
“All victims in both incidents were wearing their #lifejacket and all victims were successfully #rescued,” they wrote on Instagram. “Let this be a lesson that lifejackets #save lives.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, harbor patrol found all four victims near the sailboat (which, obviously, was ruined). They were all picked up unharmed, which is better than losing a bunch of fingernails. Unfortunately, the sailboat will not grow back.
