Sailing, Trapeze Artists, and Nearly Drowning

When I was growing up, we would always go camping and sailing.  Mostly on lakes in northern Alabama, but occasionally we'd go over to northern Georgia.  We set up our tent on the side of the lake and my Dad and I would sail his sixteen foot Coronado.  We would almost always be the only sailboat of any kind on these small lakes.


When I was about 16 or so, my Dad wanted to spice things up a bit and outfitted the boat with a trapeze even though we hardly ever encountered winds strong enough to warrant it.

image from By flickr user "sailorbill" Bill Blevins from Fairport, NY, USA - flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6292608

On the drive to Lake Wilson (?), one of the trapeze wires fell out of the boat and was dragged along the road until it disintegrated and we lost the lower part of the wire.  Not to be deterred from his fun, my Dad fixed it with some rope so we could "hike out" in true style.

Of course my Dad went first on the trapeze and of course the windward side was the broken side and of course the boat was taking on some water unbeknownst to us and of course the boat capsized as he was hiking out.  I remember clearly that I was eating a sandwich and I somehow calmly finished the sandwich as I scrambled over the side and onto the bottom of the hull which was now floating on the surface.  Unlike most capsizing (picture below), the boat actually pulled a complete 180 and the mast was pointed straight down (must have been because of the water inside the hull?).  As I stood on the bottom of the boat, waiting for my Dad to surface and tell me what to do, I realized he was trapped in the trapeze harness.  I then realized the trapeze line is slightly shorter than the length of the mast.  I then realized he was effectively trapped underwater.  I started to get nervous.  To my relief, I felt the entire boat start to list to one side as my Dad fought his way to the surface on the other side.  When his head surfaced, I could tell he was fighting the line attached to the mast and I said "Hey, are you okay?"

He responded "No" and was pulled back under.

from https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/capsized-sailboat.html

I'm not clear what happened next: if I hiked out on the opposite side to help him or if he managed to untie himself while underwater, but he did make it and we righted the boat with difficulty and paddled our half sunk boat to shore to fix it up.

Funny thing, we never really tried that trapeze line out again!