A Sailor Slips and Spends Naked Time in Nantucket Sound

While I sat out on the narrow balcony of the MV Surfside Motel in Oak Bluffs, I read the MV Times' account of a harrowing tale a seaman's disaster. The story of Charles Samuelson, an experienced ocean sailor, who slipped and fell off his 42 foot Beneteau Yaquina sailboat. The boat continued on without him until beaching itself on Cape Poge, and was recovered the next day.

But he slipped...and found himself in roaring currents between Martha's Vineyard and the mainland. He tried grabbing the line for the dingy being towed behind, but ended up under it, as water streamed by him. The force of the water pulled off first, his lifejacket, then all of his clothes. He lay there, shivering, but remembered what to do...he crossed hims arms and legs and lay on his back.

He was rescued after an indeterminate amount of minutes by a former Boston Bruins hockey player, Jay Miller, who passed him on his way back from John Havlicheck's fishing tournament.

Nelson Sigelman sums up the sailor's thoughts after the ordeal. "He thought he was prepared. He was wearing a knife and a life belt and was towing a dingy."