- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
List hosted by www.tscnet.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In a message dated 1/6/00 12:02:00 PM Pacific Standard Time,
Mac.Mclain@nike.com writes:
<< My name is Mac, I had a M15 and felt it to be a very stout little boat.
So I would be curious as to what was the damage to the M15 and what do you
think caused it. I sold my M15 because with the trailer it weight 1250 lbs.
and my Toyota RV would not pull it in the mountains. And seeing that the
boat was to go with the RV up to the mountains the M15 went . I think a P15
will be the right weight but I have not see any around lately, so if I don't
run across one before summer I'll pick up a hobi 16 which I see all the
time. Thanks Mac
>>
NOTE TO ALL: I started to send this message as a private reply to Mac and
then after typing it, thought other's might enjoy or benefit from the story.
Hi, Mac--
Sorry it took so long for me to reply to you. You had asked me how the little
M-15 I saw had become wrecked.
Not to worry, there is no boat that would have survived this boat's ultimate
end. I see it happen here at Lake Tahoe all the time. At least several times
a year. People tie their boats to moorings, usually buoys, with incorrect
knots or too short a mooring line or both. This is the High Sierra and the
winter storms can be ferocious (except this winter--I think winter has been
canceled. Perhaps it wasn't Y2K compliant). As soon as the mooring fails,
winds approaching 70 miles per hour can push a boat at very high speed and
with a lot of force, onto huge granite boulders that form a lot of the
shoreline of Lake Tahoe. I am not exaggerating the velocity of the wind.
This is from measurements from weather stations around the lake. I have
watched the readout on an anemometer atop Mt. Rose get awful close to 100
MPH. The local's here like to refer to that mountain as "Mt. Blows"
There've been some very famous sinkings in Lake Tahoe and there's usually a
death or two every year. I've seen some good ones. Another common way
people lose their boats is tying them fore and aft. When the wind shifts,
which it does constantly, the wind drives chop over the stern, weighting down
the aft end of the vessel. The more water it ships, the lower the vessel
rides and the more water gets driven into the cockpit. I watched a large, I
guess about 45 foot, power boat, the kind they use to pull tourists in
paragliders, sink just this way. When I went down to the shore on a stormy
evening, all you could see was about three feet of a bright yellow bow
sticking above the surface.
A coworker of mine has sunk his big overpowered cigarette boat twice that
way. The last time he saw it going down and went out to it to try to save
the boat and he damn near went down with it. I really think this guy should
just give up the boat and spend more time on the golf course.
Anyway, no matter how sturdy the vessel, if the owner doesn't know what he's
doing, or doesn't take care, a boat can be reduced to a pile of wood and
fiberglass scrap in a very short period of time. Even a Montgomery or a
Potter!
Geoff
P-15 Lollipop
Sail (hull?) number: 1961
N. Lake Tahoe, NV and
Monterey, CA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 31 2000 - 03:27:06 PST