No Kill Switch, Big Problems

We were anchored stern to the beach with several other cruising boats in the western anchorage in Papeete Harbor, Tahiti. We’d been invited for cocktails with our friends Beaufort and Jerry Beach aboard their massive trimaran Beach House and once we got there our son Si, age 12, volunteered to go back to Clover by dinghy to retrieve a bottle of wine we wanted to share with our friends. We heard the dinghy zoom to Clover and then a moment later zoom back again. Except it didn’t arrive. Then we heard Si in the water calling for help with the dinghy still zooming in the gap between the boats.  We got a dripping Si onto Beach House and learned that he’d been thrown from the dinghy when he accelerated the outboard. It was now spinning at high speed in small circles amongst the moored cruising boats and we realized that Si was mighty lucky to have avoided being run down. The dilemma now was how to catch a 10-foot dinghy with a 10-hp outboard and a full tank of gas that was going at full speed. The kill switch, you might ask? Ah, it lay at the bottom of Manihi lagoon in the Tuamotus, where it had gone overboard in 90 feet of water two weeks earlier. We’d jury rigged a lanyard in its place. One by one our cruising friends joined us in their dinghies as we tried to lasso our dinghy. After a harrowing hour, we managed to get a line around the engine and with a dinghy on either side managed to wrestle it to a stop. No one was hurt, no damage was done but we all had a good scare. Needless to say, next morning we rode le truck to Nautisport on Fare Ute where we bought not one but three kill switches for the outboard.