[SVAuspicious]

*ring*

(voice) Mr. Skolnick?

(me) Yes

(voice) This is LT S------ with the United States Coast Guard. We received a report that your boat, Auspicious, hit the Rt 50 bridge at Kent Narrows. Is everyone okay?

(me) Excuse me?

(voice) Is everyone okay?

Well c$^&.

So we talk about it a bit, they don't have a description just reports but the name is clear. Fortunately I'm close to the mooring my boat lies on and could get to where I could see her in just a few minutes. She is where she belongs and all the high stuff is in good order.

Call the Coast Guard back and let them know and head for my dinghy to commune with Auspicious.

Somebody else (not a documented boat -- the USCG is working through state registrations) had a really bad day.

Kudos to the USCG for their follow through, and to the watch officer who noted bad weather coming in this evening when I called back to tell them it wasn't my boat that hit the Rt 50 bridge.

My blood pressure is slowly dropping.

 

[Donna_F]

Wow.

VERY glad your Auspicious is safe and sound.

 

[smackdaddy]

Wow. Glad things are okay dude.

 

[SVAuspicious]

Wow.

VERY glad your Auspicious is safe and sound.

Wow is right. I can't imagine how I would have felt if I was hours away. I'm still working through a gamut of emotions. It's going to take me a while to wind down.

I feel really bad for whoever hit the bridge. That had to really hurt.

 

[Slayer]

I feel really bad for whoever hit the bridge. That had to really hurt.

Very kind of you, but as the old saying goes, "better them than you!"

 

[engineer_sailor]

Oh wow. Just reading that hurt. Glad to hear all is OK

Josh


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MedSailor]

I got a letter once naming me and my boat in an incident where there we're not enough lifejackets aboard. I was asked to respond before the 5,000 dollar fine was levied.

My response started like this, "seeing as how the uscg id now under the umbrella of the department of Homeland Security surely it is easy for you to see from my passport records that I was in Belgium at the time. Since you have named my boat as well I will give you the contact information for the yard where she was being stored on the hard the day ofvthe incident so you can pursue things further..."

My letter raised my bp slightly. Your call would have immediately have caused a release of all sphincters.

Medsailor

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[MarkofSeaLife]

LT S------ with the United States Coast Guard

How did he pronounce that?

 

[weinie]

You think the phone call was bad? Wait till you get the bill in the mail for the repairs to the bridge!!!

 

[MikeOReilly]

Glad it wasn't your Auspicious, although no doubt your doppleganger is having a bad day.

This reminds me of two similar events in my past. The first was receiving a call from the city police. They introduce themselves and then as: "Do you know where your jeep is?" Sadly, it was our jeep that was missing from the parking lot.

The second event was coming home from a six-week sail on Lake Superior to find a voicemail from the Coast Guard. Thinking they were looking for info on a fellow cruiser, I called right away. Turns out they had been looking for us! Our non-sailing neighbours, fearing we'd been gone too long, reported us missing to the CG. Luckily they didn't have a good idea of our boat description, so the CG had only put out a general bulletin, not commenced a search.

 

[THEFRENCHA]

Same heart attack ! A few years ago as arriving by car at the YC I checked the mooring field and ...NO BOAT !
Rushed to the club to finally find my boat at the dock !
Mooring maintenance ...

 

[SVAuspicious]

How did he pronounce that?

She. I just didn't think there was any point in promulgating her name.

Regardless she did a good job. She can come sailing with us any time.

 

[hpeer]

Glad it wasn't your Auspicious, although no doubt your doppleganger is having a bad day.

This reminds me of two similar events in my past. The first was receiving a call from the city police. They introduce themselves and then as: "Do you know where your jeep is?" Sadly, it was our jeep that was missing from the parking lot.

The second event was coming home from a six-week sail on Lake Superior to find a voicemail from the Coast Guard. Thinking they were looking for info on a fellow cruiser, I called right away. Turns out they had been looking for us! Our non-sailing neighbours, fearing we'd been gone too long, reported us missing to the CG. Luckily they didn't have a good idea of our boat description, so the CG had only put out a general bulletin, not commenced a search.

Similar story, but with my Wife. CCG found me via credit card.

That's how I got a sat phone!

 

[erps]

We kept a previous boat on a mooring several years ago and it did break loose and drift up on shore during a high tide. We got the call from the Sheriff's Office notifying us at 4:00 a.m.

So a couple years later, we get another call from the Sheriff's Office that a boat had drifted up on the beach again. I ask what the boat's name/number is. It's not our boat. I ask why they called me and they said because of our incident a year or two earlier. Geez!

 

[SVAuspicious]

The authorities are taking this seriously. I had a Natural Resources Police officer visit me to take a statement. Apparently one of the bridge lights was damaged - the green centerline light.

My take-away is that if you hit a bridge you should report it yourself.

I'm hoping they let me know when they find the guy that hit the bridge.

 

[Sal Paradise]

I had a similar experience when a friend's 30' sailboat broke off a mooring and was drifting in the Hudson River one Sunday afternoon. He must have put me down as an emergency contact at the marina.

Voice on phone; Mr Sal Paradise? This is Lt. Smith.

Me: Hello...yes.

Voice on phone: Mr Paradise are you associated with a sailboat with the name Stardust?

Me: Go on........I'm listening.




By the time we got there she was up against an old derelict barge - undamaged.

 

[capttb]

My friend used to keep a huge powerboat on a trailer in our marina 60 miles north of San Diego, while waiting for a slip. One day at work he received the following call,
"hey, it's Joe, are you on your way to Mexico ?
"No, why do you ask?"
"Because I'm behind your boat on the freeway and it's headed south"
He followed it until the police arrived and boat was recovered.

 

[hellosailor]

So, somebody just called the USCG and claimed they saw a boat with the name "Auspicious" somewhere on it, and the USCG magically decided you must have the only boat with that name in the entire world? No further description or anything warranted?

Or maybe they called all eight documented vessels names "Auspicious" and tried to see who'd blush and cry?

I suppose a letter to the Commandant's Office chiding them for their lack of public relations skills and general ineptness might get somebody sent out for more training.

 

[smurphny]

Glad you're boat is ok but that must have been upsetting, geeeez! Hope you don't wind up having to prove it was not your boat.

 

[B.J. Porter]

Recently we we were in Panama...someone else gave some friends of ours a fright.

There was another American boat with the same name as ours (Evenstar) in Panama headed to Ecuador. Our next stop was to be the Galapagos, also part of Ecuador though he was headed for the mainland...how many American Evenstars are there headed for parts of Ecuador, right?

En route, he started taking on water and the boat sank, the skipper and his crew were picked up by a passing merchant vessel.

The first I heard of it was an e-mail from a friend asking if we were all OK. They had heard about the distress situation via one of the SSB nets and wanted to make sure it wasn't us.