I'm sure every ones got a good story... lets make a thread that we can all smile at for the festive season and write up some of our more silly sailing disasters ..... I'll start, I think this is my best.

A mate and I in our single days take out two darlings for a Sunday sail on my Spacesailor 24 at the time. Beautiful day, gentle breeze, get back to mooring just after sunset. A few ales and glasses of wine consumed during the afternoon. All good, and I had high hopes for mine after getting cuddly on the boat.

After securing the mooring at the end of our sail we all get in my tiny 2m single seat dinghy and start slowly paddling for shore with 6" free board. All talking about our great day. My date is getting friendlier and closer as my mate and his girl crouched up front paddle us in and we take the opportunity to do a bit of canoodling. Boating is very romantic and the people paddling up front can't see what we're doing on the back seat. Things are looking very good until suddenly I feel this icy cold water on my lower back. At that instant my date says &*#&^( we're sinking!! I didn't know nice girls could swear like that. I think we took a small wave over the stern combined with being distracted.

The dinghy went down stern first and instantaneously we were all swimming surrounded by eskies, floating runners, cushions, shoes and expensive handbags. Yup my mate and I on our first date with these two girls had chucked them in!

There's worse. On the shore was a 21st birthday bash in a park. We were their free entertainment. We swam to shore amid cat calls, yahoos and cheering. When we made it to the beach at least we got applause. The girls looked really good with the wet look but they weren't smiling!!!

I never saw my date again and my mates went off and married someone else :-)

Next story please!