On the nose (almost)
You're not kidding, Mike, even the small ones are well built. This weekend, while we were doing some pre-countdown maneuvering for the first race of the day, I went below to switch on some circuits after giving the helm to a friend who was crewing with me. When I raised my head through the companionway no more than 10 seconds later, my attention was first directed to a boat on nearly parallel course a few lengths to our right. I know the skipper to be very competent and was not concerned, but when I swung my gaze forward it was to see a Catalina 30 on absolute collision course, dead ahead and closing fast, both of us doing about 4 knots with contact clearly unavoidable. I grabbed the tiller and swung it so as to hit him a glancing blow, sure that we would do major damage to each other and that my E23 would come out the worst of it. He put his helm over at the last second, and we hit port to port. The impact was not as hard as I expected, but then I was expecting splintering glass, rig and sail damage, and perhaps losing the rig. As it was, our rubrail made contact with his topsides leaving about 15' of streaking on my rail and about 8' on his hull. Because our helm was over and we were bouncing off him obliquely, we now were very close to and apparently going to hit the O'Day on our right, who had not realized our predicament until the last second and thus hadn't left us much room. However, he was able to fend us off with several people getting to the rail quickly and using their feet intelligently. I could not believe so little damage resulted from the initial contact - I would have bet my house that we would have significant damage when I first saw the C30. It must have been my lucky day, and maybe I should have played the ponies instead of sailing. By the way, we were on starboard close hauled, the C30 was on port, but I know there was no excuse for not seeing him and taking appropriate evasive action sooner than we did. Lesson: Especially in close quarters with lots of boats, even if experienced skippers/crew predominate, don't assume the other helmsman sees you or knows what to do if he does.
