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Details

INCIDENT #4: SEPARATION ANXIETY
Excerpt below from CatSailor.com

Peter Cullum and Daryl Moss were on a Nacra 20, pilule going down the ocean side of Key Largo with spinnaker up, cheap when they capsized. They righted the boat and Daryl got back on, but the boat started sailing pretty fast again when it righted, and Peter couldn’t get on, so he let himself go to the back of the boat so he could grab the rudder and turn the boat into the wind and stop it. But the rudder slipped out of his hands, so he grabbed the tiller extension that was dragging in the water behind the boat. Well, the extension broke off from the tiller cross bar. He was now separated from the boat, about 2 miles offshore.

So then the boat capsized again with Daryl on it, and it was drifting away from Peter. According to Daryl’s GPS, the boat was drifting at 1.8 knots and Peter was swimming at 1 knot. So Daryl called the Coast Guard, and meanwhile Peter was swimming to shore. He swam for an hour and a half and says he was within maybe 15 minutes of shore when a Sea Tow boat plucked him from the water and put him back on his boat. He and Daryl righted the boat and continued on to Anne’s Beach. No problem!

Interesting detail is that Peter was swimming to shore all that time still holding his tiller extension.