New York Harbor, June 7, 1998

We were doing racing drills on our usual J-24 from the Manhattan Yacht Club. We approached the G1 buoy south of Governor's Island to practice a leeward mark rounding. A few yards before the buoy, a big gust caused us to broach and slide towards the buoy while heeling about 75 degrees. We managed to keep the hull off the buoy, but the spinnaker got caught so we blew the sheets and halyard.

Here's David Bacon assessing the situation after we jibed back and unclipped the spinnaker halyard before it had a chance to yank down the mast:

Here we are heading back under sail to put Scott Stensland on the buoy so he could take down the spinnaker:

Here's Scott climbing the buoy:

And here's Scott trying to free the spinnaker:

But the sail had caught on the seagull spikes, so Scott had to cut it away:

The understated narration above is from David. The photographs are by me. The knife was a Myerchin A377.