Massive Yacht Collision and Destruction – Watch more Funny Videos

Listen to the other powerboaters cheer as one of their own gets trashed.

Info from youtube: 3 People were thrown off their boat south of the stuart inlet. The “run-a-way” boat was head straight for our boat. Another boat picked up the boat owners and we rode along side, radioed coast guard, and made sure no one was hurt.

This was a productive weekend for my Penobscot 14 wood boat project - despite a late start on Saturday caused by an extended middle-of-the-night power outage. Work began around noon – more planks were fitted and glued, putting me ahead of my unwritten schedule. Sunday arrived with another semi-late start, but I was motivated. I felt like the momentum was really picking up then, the setback. While whittling away on an overhanging plank near the transom I heard something fall off the boat and hit the ground. There was a sound of brittle metal hitting concrete – I could feel tragedy in the air. Hoping it was a chisel, I peer around the corner to see what produced the unhappy sound. My poor little rabbet plane, the one I had ordered over 5 years ago for specifically for this venture, lay there on the garage floor in two pieces. It’s supposed to be only one. Damn thee gods of the boatbuilders!!! It’s the one tool that is (was) unique to this entire project – of all the things to break…

After dimissing thoughts of glueing, clamping and the always dependable J.B. Weld, I tried using it as-is. It sort of worked in a monkey-humps-a-football kind of way, but it will need replacing. Not such a big deal – then why write this post? Because sometimes I swear there’s a mischievous force that enjoys testing us - to see who will quit, who will perservere and who will reach for the rum while trying to blame anyone but themselves. Don’t they test these tools? What the hell does “drop forged” mean anyhow?

On your way to a beautiful island, perhaps for a week of sailing the clear Caribbean waters. Don’t go too-too far now!

“That kinda….blows.”

Not sure which is worse, the loud crunching sound or the guy laughing in the background.

My wife just snapped this shot on the way home from work tonight. I couldn’t resist putting it up. Poor smoker.

Click the thumbnail for the big pic.

Interesting story from The Citrus County Chronicle about an Ozello, FL couple that sails from Jamica to Key West and bumps into Cuba along the way. Didn’t think it was possible to sail that close to Cuba without risking getting blown out of the water – much less hit a reef.

Here’s the full story, link to Chronicle at bottom.

Local couple spends Christmas in Cuba
By Nancy Kennedy

After spending Christmas in a Cuban jail, Crystal River never looked so good to Rob Vassallo and his girlfriend A.J. Smith.

Vassallo, 40, and Smith, 29, left their home in Ozello in October to sail from Key West to Jamaica. As they approached the west coast of Cuba, 20-foot waves crashed Vassallo’s 38-foot Morgan sailboat into a sharp reef, shipwrecking the couple.

They spent the night sleeping on a beach and were awakened by Cuban soldiers who led them to a holding cell in a jail in Havana.

No toilet seats or toilet paper, ice-cold showers, no toothbrushes or toothpaste and chicken-skin soup for their meals.

They didn’t set foot on U.S. soil until New Year’s Eve.

“I got a call Christmas morning,” said Vassallo’s mother, Susan Vassallo. “I thought it was a telemarketer. ‘It’s Christmas — no thank you,’ I said and hung up.”

Immediately the phone rang again and a voice on the other end said, “This is a call from Havana, Cuba. Don’t hang up.”

Two days earlier her son and his girlfriend had run into rough water. “I was up for two days straight, sailing,” Vassallo said.

“It was fun,” Smith said. “We were just tired.”

As Vassallo set out to maneuver the boat around the south side of Cuba, hoping to find calmer weather, the waves whipped up and pushed the boat into the reef.

That’s when they spotted the lighthouse at Cabo de San Antonio, a military camp, and went ashore. By then it was about 2:30 a.m.

“We were yelling, ‘Hola! Hola!’ but no one woke up,” Vassallo said.

Exhausted, they set up a camp on the beach and slept, waking the next morning to seven or eight Cuban soldiers ordering them to get up.

“We followed them to the lighthouse, where we waited for higher officials and an interpreter,” Vassallo said.

Allowed to go back to the boat to gather their belongings, Vassallo and Smith discovered the Cuban soldiers taking the boat apart.

“That made me mad — and cry,” Smith said. “I didn’t cry through the whole thing until then.”

Next, the couple was taken to Havana and put in jail with others facing immigration problems, including two women and two men from Ecuador, a man from Australia and one from England.

“The men were actually treated better than the women at the jail,” Vassallo said. “Only the men could use the phone, and the food was horrible. The fried chicken had feathers in it.”

Because the United States does not have an embassy in Cuba, Americans go through the Swiss embassy via the U.S. Interests Section. It was a representative from that office who had called Mrs. Vassallo Christmas morning.

With the boat confiscated by the Cubans, Vassallo needed money wired to the Interests Section for plane fare to Miami and bus fare to Crystal River for himself and Smith.

“We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in jail,” Vassallo said.

They were released Dec. 26 and sent to stay in a private house, which belonged to a university professor.

Vassallo said although the home they stayed in was nice, they also saw a lot of poverty. Groceries are purchased by using rationing cards, and people dump sewage out their windows onto the city streets.

“Everything’s decaying,” he said.

While they waited for the Cuban government to approve their leaving, they were taken back to the jail and also stayed at another private home. Every time they were promised, “Tomorrow you can go,” something happened to keep them yet another day.

“We didn’t hear anything for three days, and that was tough,” Mrs. Vassallo said. “I didn’t know if they wanted more money, like a ransom. People were telling me horror stories about Cuba and then people told me how great Cuba is, so I didn’t know what to believe.”

Finally, Vassallo and Smith got on a noisy twin-engine plane to Miami on New Year’s Eve, landed in Miami at 9 and were headed to Crystal River by 10:20.

“We rang in the New Year on a Greyhound bus,” Vassallo said. “I was exhausted.”

Now they’re back working at The Other Place in Ozello and planning for their next sailing trip.

“What I’m doing next is making another boat out of Kevlar,” Vassallo said. “I’m going to use hydrogen motors and solar panels — no gas, no diesel.”

And no Cuba.

“I’ll put a little more distance between me and Cuba,” he said.

http://www.chronicleonline.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?071+article+News+20090107213601071326

At approximately 9:30 p.m. on April 29, 2006, five friends on a 27’ O’Day were sailing toward their marina on California’s Clear Lake…
FULL ARTICLE ON BOAT US

9:00 a.m. Gulfport, Florida, high tide. Driving down to the marina to check out an expected two to three feet above normal high tide, I’m stopped halfway down 29th st, my normal route to the marina. The road is flooded. If I had a Humscalade or other monster earth wrecking vehicle I may have made it. My ’96 Nissan 240 that scrapes the road (and cement parking curbs) is not going to make it. After shooting the below pic, I circle around closer to the water, which is actually higher ground and make my way to pier 3.

Stepping out of the little roadwarrior car, the boats in front of me look very surreal. They are all up almost level with the parking lot – and they look twice as big! The power of these storms is really amazing. Here’s a CAT 1 or 2 Hurricane that is 350 miles from Tampa Bay and it rasies every boat in the marina to eye level. What in the world would happen if it was right on top of us? This little phenom shakes off my apathy and I’m starting to think hard about how to prepare the boat for a severe storm surge. One big problem is more than half (I would bet) boats in the marina are neglected and it’s those boats that will come loose and do the damage. Here’s a few more pics.

This is the raw video footage recently recovered from the boat Little Murka off the coast of Ireland. Dom Mee the owner of Little Murka was caught in the largest hurricane on record in 2005 – in a 14′ boat.

 
Video Found From Shipwreck – Watch more free videos