A wannabe sailor who took a Greyhound bus from Texas to Connecticut to buy a sailboat he saw advertised online got more than he bargained for Sunday when the craft took on water three miles off Norwalk Harbor and he had to be rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Michael Williams first glimpsed the glossy color photo of My Children’s Toy on eBay days ago, and decided he had to have the 27-foot sailboat, enticed by the catchy description and rock-bottom $157.50 price tag.
“There were so many people who wanted her,” Williams said in a telephone interview Sunday night. “But I got her.”
The retired trucker then had to get to My Children’s Toy where it was for sale in Norwalk. So, he plunked down $262 for a bus ticket and arrived in Connecticut to claim her Saturday afternoon.
When the trailer unloaded My Children’s Toy at a Norwalk marina, it was clear the craft wasn’t anywhere near as shipshape as depicted in its photograph. The mast and rigging were worn. There were mechanical problems seen and unseen. The dream boat, alas, was a mess.
But Williams, 55, wasn’t discouraged.
“I decided to overlook all that,” Williams said. “I knew the seller wasn’t guaranteeing anything about it. They even say so in their ads. I had to wait until the hurricane was over to come to Connecticut to get her, and I was anxious to get her out.”
The eager Williams jumped aboard early Saturday afternoon with his gear, a marine radio, his belongings and enough bologna and cheese to make sandwiches for days.
“I just sailed out of the marina on a shakedown, and if it had gone all right I planned to go (straight) to Florida with her,” Williams said. “Right away, though, there was trouble. The pin that holds the boom to the mast for the mainsail came out. And it was too dark to repair it, so I had to let the sail down.”
He dropped anchor three miles out of the harbor, where the Coast Guard says the water is 120 feet deep. The winds started kicking up. And by sunrise Sunday the waves were 4-feet high. It was hard to remain upright.
“She started taking on water,” Williams said. “There might have been a slow leak someplace, I don’t know. And the sea was real high. It was making me real sick.”
Williams donned his life jacket, and called the U.S. Coast Guard for help from his marine radio about 8:40 a.m. Sunday.
The sails were down. The rigging was tangled. More water was pouring in. And he said it was hard to stand upright, let alone maintain his balance. At this point, Williams said, he wondered two things: what his wife in the Philippines might think and that perhaps this 27-foot sailboat that he spent $157.50 on was “maybe not such a bargain” after all.
My Children’s Toy wasn’t Williams’ first sailboat purchase on eBay. He has bought four others since 2010, traveling from Texas to Maryland to New Orleans. But none had come so cheap and had ever threatened to cost him his life. “I’d buy them for a couple hundred dollars, put a few dollars into them and turn around and sell them, usually for a thousand or two,” Williams said, “and it occurred to me this deal with this here sailboat, it might not end so well — that I might not make it to Florida.”
The Coast Guard launched a rescue boat from Eaton’s Neck on Long Island, while the Norwalk Fire Department sent out another vessel to pick up Williams, who was treated for some minor injuries in the Norwalk Hospital emergency department and later released.
In Connecticut, a boater has to take and pass a safe-boating class, though Williams acknowledged he didn’t have a boating license.
“No, I don’t have any of that certification,” Williams said. “But I’ve been on plenty of boats. When I was a kid, my family even sailed to Europe on our own boat. So, I am more than sure that I have all of the experience it would take to pass one of those.”
Courtesy of www.norwalkcitizenonline.com
Never Never Never without a survey!
I work as a Technician in a boatyard here in WA. You wouldn’t believe how many people like this guy exist! The Coast Guard isn’t helping our gene pool improve eh?
And we wonder why the government wants to stick it’s nose into the boating world by requiring licensing?
A boating license is not a substitute for “common sense”. Either people have common sense or they don’t__it is not something you learn. A person with “Common Sense” does not purchase a used boat and go to sea in it the same day without thoroughly checking it out. Obtaining a boating license___is not going to make anyone in his situation feel more comfortable. Or change their perception of what they feel is rough water to them: “I felt real sick, I could not stand up and maintain balance”, so a boating license was not going to make him feel any better physically. All motor vehicle operators have a drivers license___yet over 40,000 die each year in the millions of auto accidents each year.
PS: More people die each year in back yard swimming pools than out on the water on boats.Ya think a license to own a swimming pool would help?
My son made a similar stupid purchase w/o survey from a California used car dealer. No survey! Didn’t even see it before he plunked down a bunch of cash and hired a company to haul it to Oregon for him. Cost him a lot of thousands of $. But he doesn’t listen to dad anyway.
This is, I think what one must do to pass to adulthood. I did this stunt with a motorcycle. I was looking for something fast that would take me cross country. Late at night I bought a medium/light bike for $100 and promptly headed for California from Chicago. I got 100 miles south of Chicago, when the gas tank fell off and spewed gas everywhere. I crashed the bike and got away from it as it promptly started burning and me covered with gasoline. With daylight, I found the bike should have never run. The wheels were crooked, the tires just about had air in them. I lost my $100, arrived late in California and just screwed up in big time. I have passed this stunt on to others many times and I think I might have saved some on from trouble.
Some folks have a great sense of adventure and that could be good or bad. I always believed that it’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes than my own, if possible, but maybe i’m too conservative. I like to read books and magazines about these kind of voyages and how to make repairs at sea if something goes wrong.