HAHAHAHA! These are wonderful stories, all of them!

Here's my contribution:

We had just completed a 13 month rebuild of our Alden ketch, and sailed her to the BVI to begin chartering. Our first charter was a freebie...arranged by a prestigious broker: one of the editors of Yachting magazine and her daughter and boyfriend. They promised (and indeed delivered) to write a feature piece about us in the magazine.

Doing my best to impress, I decided to sail off of my mooring in Soper's Hole on the first morning of our charter. Quite unused to sailing a ketch in tight quarters, I realized very quickly that my headsails (a small jib and staysail) wouldn't compensate for my huge mizzen. Thank God I hadn't yet raised the mainsail. I was just a bit slow in coming around when jibing my way out of the harbor.

A German couple (I knew that because of the subsequent screaming) were sunbathing nude on the foredeck of a CSY 44 bareboat. My bowsprit was aimed right at them, like a huge spear. They grabbed their towels to cover their privates and ran screaming to the stern. My boat finally responded and I cleared the CSY, but managed to snag their dinghy engine on my dolphin-striker (the stay that supports the bowsprit from underneath). It wrenched the engine off the dinghy and into the drink.

No one on board our boat, except me, noticed that anything was wrong, or that I was very close to crapping my pants. So I told my wife (who had never sailed a day in her life) to 'head the boat up the channel' - I needed to attend to something back in Soper's Hole.

I hopped in the Whaler, returned to the scene of the crime, and did my best to apologize. I stuffed $300 into a cupholder in the cockpit, along with my business card. The German couple were still quite naked and huddled together in the cockpit under their towels, like frightened villagers at Normandy. I raced back to my boat, which my wife managed to steer quite aptly, to the curious inquiries of all on board. "Oh, just some paperwork I forgot" was my reply.

Dodged my first bullet of the week, but not my last!