Three lessons plus one

1. From now on I will always wear my life vest.  This lesson is about the best use of my energy. When my boat went over, I didn’t have my life vest on.  On my way around the stern to get to the centerboard, the tiller unshipped and I caught it, and then could not do anything other than hold on to the boat and tiller to keep myself afloat until the rescue boat arrived.  Once it arrived, I fetched my vest out from under the boat and struggled to get it on.  I never felt in danger of drowning, but I spent a lot of energy keeping myself afloat that I could have used for dealing with the situation. One of the committee members had to get in the water and do the lion’s share of the work of getting the boat upright.  If I had had a life vest on, I would have expended much less energy staying afloat and navigating in the water.  By the time boat was upright, I was completely exhausted and still had to bale a boat full of water. Life vests keep you afloat so you don’t have to tread water.  Even if the situation is not life-threatening, there is no reason not to take advantage of the vest.
2. From now on I will always tie down my rudder.  Rudders on S16s are held in place by gravity. Unlike my own boat, the borrowed boat I was using for the race did not have a hole through the pintle for a cotter pin.  Instead, it relied on a small latch above the top pintle.  When I hit the water, I knew what I had to do.  I first checked that my crew was ok and then dashed around the stern to the bottom of the boat to grab the centerboard and lever the boat back upright.  But that latch above the rudder’s pintle opened and the rudder dropped.  Instead of getting to the centerboard, I had to catch my rudder.  I knew that a turtled boat is eventually recoverable but a rudder on the bottom of the lake is not. As I grabbed it, got it under control, and steadied myself, I watch helplessly as the boat completed its roll and the centerboard dropped back into the centerboard trunk.  Never again.  I’m not even relying on the cotter pin on my own boat.  I am going to learn the best way to tie the rudder to the boat so I don’t have to deal with it no matter what.
3. I need to be stronger.  As I say, it takes a lot of energy to deal with a capsized boat, including pulling myself around, pulling myself up, levering the boat on the centerboard, baling the water, and fixing the rigging.  Once the centerboard was down, someone had to go under boat to pivot it back up.  I simply did not have the strength do all that.  I don’t need to be a bodybuilder but, at the minimum, I need to be able to pull the weight of my body up by my arms.  So today I rigged a pull-up bar and am starting a light strength-training regimen.