A couple of weekends ago the sailing club that Zoe is part of had a "fun" weekend event called the Opti Olympics. An Opti, apparently, is a bathtub with a sail. It may be more technical than that, but it's what it looks like to me.
Anyway they had this event which was to consist of a series of races in these boats, in between the thunderstorns, four boats at a time. The person who is the club photographer was away on vacation so they asked me to do the photography for the event. I agreed, and as a result ended up going out on a speedboat owned by a member of the club to photo the event.
Things started well, the competitors took their time getting out of the quay area and into the open water, where they all made their way to the buoy that was being used as a marker for the races. Some got there quicker than others, but everyone made it eventually. At that point however things changed dramatically. The wind started gusting and things started to go wrong. Remember how I said bathtubs with sails? Well bathtubs usually have the water on the inside, and the lake had the same thought.
One by one all the competitors took on water and sunk in one fashion or another. We got a couple of more speedboats out from the club to rescue the competitors and at a point I had to stop taking pictures and start pulling people out of the water and trailing semi-sunk boats.
People along the waterfront stopped to take pictures, and one of the large touring boats passed us, and then swung round again so all the tourists could have a better look. Eventually even the police sent out a boat to rescue one of our sailors and their boat.
See, this is what happens to boats, and something always seems to happen when I'm out on one.
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