This afternoon a guy came out to the bay near our Airstream with a beautiful wooden radio-controlled sailboat. He walked out a bit into the bay, got it set, and off it went. After a few tacks, it was about 30 yards offshore and something went wrong and he was no longer able to control it. He took off his shirt and went in after it. It's shallow for a while, so he was walking/wading for a bit, then swimming for the next bit. The wind was not at its worst but it was pretty strong and the boat was headed out fast. The guy stopped at some point and decided he wasn't going to catch up to it. (On account of, you know, sails.) He said he made the decision not to drown over a $200 boat. Good decision, for sure.
Kevin grabbed the binoculars and kept an eye on it while we talked to the guy for a minute, and it looked like it might end up at the marina across the way. "Let's go get it!" I said. Kevin tracked it with the binoculars while I drove the guy around to the other side of the bay and got updates from Kevin by cell phone. After a few misses, we finally ended up at the spot where Kevin said the boat was.
Unfortunately it was in a slip near a fishing boat that was behind a locked door at the top of the gangway. A few moments later, two girls eventually headed up and let the guy in.
Kevin was still reporting a visual on the boat from our side of the bay, but that it looked like it might be headed back out of the slip. But not before it's owner snatched it up triumphantly. "Bad boat!"
Turns out the guy built this boat himself and it's very nice, so I imagine that in addition to the two hundred bucks there's probably about 50 hours of his time invested in the thing. Glad we helped him get it back.
Kevin's hoping that this good deed will build us up some good "RC karma" in case the hexacopter ever goes rogue. Heh.
