Feature Photo: Elaine Charteris aboard Impulse with Marshall Williamson. Taken by Scott Richards.
Marshall Williamson was voted the unanimous winner of the Fall 2020 Blunder Bucket for a nomination that included a total of three blunders; two made in the same day and that kept Shazam and crew off the water the first race weekend of the Fall Series.
According to the eyewitness, Bruce Andress, while turning his boat around to raise the mast in Bruce’s yard, Marshall broke the masthead. After replacing the masthead, and while raising the mast, the mast broke in half like a toothpick. Marshall mentioned Victor Felice had a hand in this too. Will we ever know?
Here are a few pictures of the wounded and repaired mast. Marshall employed a retired friend in Tucson that worked for an aircraft company, saying that he came up with the right rivets for the repair.
One way to inspect lines 
Court Roberts: A shocked witness 
Does that mast have the measles? No- rivets, lots of rivets!
Luckily, Marshall was able to fix his mast and make it to the second race weekend, but the blunders weren’t over. Bruce continued on with Marshall’s third incident involving a sunken trailer and a scuba diver. Marshall’s tow strap came off his trailer and a diver had to go 35 feet underwater to recover the sunken treasure, I mean trailer.
Marshall attempted to defend himself, a sure way to win the bucket. According to Marshall, this incident happened later in the season after a pleasure sail on Lake Pleasant. He said he was using a new tow strap gifted to him from AYC member Peter Burgard. Peter was compelled to get him a new one after seeing the condition of Marshall’s old one.
The story has it that Marshall called Victor for help to recover the trailor, thinking a favor was due for breaking his mast, and Victor called Bruce, who then called the diver. Marshall did disclose that Bruce knows the diver from personal experience with trailer dunking! What a team!
Anyway, for $75 and the diver submerged for quite some time, the trailer was successfully recovered. Marshall says the new strap’s loop was not broken in, which was part of the problem (more defense). That and the fact that he hadn’t added a safety line to his new strap. Marc Danner offered to gift Marshall with some heavy-duty carabiners like he and Myles use, just in case.
So Marshall gets a new tow strap, some free carabiners, and at the end of the Happy Hour he won the $25 gift card for DoorDash. Gee Marshall, the gifts keep coming. Maybe a little misfortune isn’t so bad after all.