I was up at the park today doing my daily laps when I saw a couple guys running speedboats/hydros. They had this rescue tug I thought was pretty impressive. Us boaters tend to be of the ingenious type.
In 1/72 I had a German T boat that fired a grappling hook from the stern over the bow of your boat and then pulled it back to port.
race boats are generally hard to recover due to their hull shape and shallow draft, and they flip over or stall a lot. That specialized tugboat makes a lot of sense for them. Perhaps the most impressive thing I've ever seen was when my 1:96 scale USS Constitution was rammed by a large gas-powered boat. It was at a large scale warships regatta and a couple of idiots decided to run their large gas speedboat a reversed rudder servo. Constitution's keel was broken off by the collision, and she capsized. Fortunately her foam-filled hull remained afloat. Immediately the scale tugboat guys (who were happily pushing around some of the larger warships near the shore) swapped over to business mode, and launched a full-scale rescue operation. In less than a minute, my stricken ship was surrounded by at least six tugboats working in careful coordination. The larger ones provided main thrust, a couple of smaller ones steered, and the last one kept the big ones properly lined up on my upside-down ship. The full set of sails pointing straight down in the water meant the tugboats could use their full power without moving too fast. Ultimately they all had a bunch of fun playing rescue, and I only lost $5 of plastic and ballast. The idiots with the speedboat got a fine (they broke a number of lake rules) and lost a chunk out of their fiberglass hull. Oh, and they had to wait for their wreck to drift ashore with the wind.
Yes, one of our Italian destroyers had a grappling hook set up too. It worked great and was able to pull several ships back to port. Anything's better than swimming! LOL Sounds like the tugboat guys were quite skilled. Interesting how all the people who play the different aspects of this game are really quite good at what they do.
