This reminded me of one of my own stupid moments.
I'll admit to being involved in something similar about 15 yrs ago. I had an 18 ft fishing boat, and was heading out with 3 others for some snapper fishing early one morning. We were trying to get to my secret spot for high tide but running a bit behind schedule. It was still dark, not a breath of wind and the protected Port River was like glass. My brother-in-law was at the helm, and he opened up the throttle to about 20 knots along a wide open stretch of the river. I was facing aft checking out the waypoints on my handheld GPS and was thinking -maybe I should advise him that he should slow it up considering it was so dark with no moon.
Suddenly -CRASH- we stopped almost dead in the water.(in more ways than one) Everyone was thrown into the bulkhead. We picked ourselves up, nursing our bruises. I thought we had hit another boat or a marker buoy. There was nothing around. Luckily no damage to the my boat other than the compass and sounder that had been ripped off from colliding bodies.
I asked what the $#@& did we hit. "A 5 foot wave appeared out of nowhere", I was told. Yet, ther was no other boat to be seen; we were still miles from the mouth of the river; and the water was flat. From what?
Then I realized that we were only a mile up from the submarine base where they were doing sea trials on the new Collins class submarine which had recently been built. I can only assume that we we hit its wake as it dove down.
I have since learned to speak my mind if I feel uneasy about the operation of any boat (especially my own).
Anyone else willing to confess a stupid moment? I'm sure we all have had one.
