Suddenly Overboard Read online

On the seventh day they set sail again, heading for Bermuda, which was still hundreds of miles away. For 3 days they had high winds and big seas but were coping.

  On November 11, their tenth day of a voyage that typically takes only 6 or 7, the sun broke through clearing skies. The tropical storm had passed, leaving huge waves, and the wind was dropping. Their spirits rose. They were still more than 200 miles from Bermuda, but it looked like they’d passed through the worst of it.

  It was so much calmer, in fact, that Jan took the helm without putting on her PFD and tether. She had every confidence in their seaworthy, full-keel boat continuing to ride through the waves.

  A little past noon, Rob was coming up the companionway from the cabin where he’d been catching up on some boat work. As he reached the last step Jan suddenly shouted “Look out!” and before he could turn to look, a huge wave slammed the boat and knocked it over.

  Rob was thrown violently into the bimini frame, which crumpled under the impact but kept him from going overboard, but Jan was thrown into the water.

  As the boat bobbed back upright, he rushed to the helm and spotted her in the water. He immediately deployed the Lifesling, a flotation rescue collar on a long line, and circled back in the boat to pull its line in to Jan. He saw her grab the line about halfway between the flotation collar and the boat. He tightened the circle to get closer, following the standard procedure, but then she went under.

  The line went slack. He never saw her again.

  He quickly set off their EPIRB and then hit the emergency button on their VHF-DSC radio. He could only pray for help and keep scanning the water for Jan.

  A tanker some 20 miles away responded on the radio and immediately diverted toward Rob’s location to assist in the search. The Coast Guard began an aerial search. The tanker arrived an hour later and Rob boarded it, abandoning Triple Stars, and they continued to search.

  After 24 hours the Coast Guard called off its search. Without a PFD or other flotation, Jan could not have survived that long.

  Why was this experienced sailor not wearing a PFD with a harness and not tethered to the boat? Rob later described the huge wave that hit Triple Stars as a rogue wave, a sudden, unexpected wave much larger than other passing waves. You don’t expect such waves, so you may not be prepared for one to strike without warning.

  As the stories in the following chapters show, however, most sailing emergencies resulting in fatalities do not occur when expected. The greatest danger, you could say, is not expecting danger.

  Briefly

  Tynemouth, UK, 1998. The skipper of a 14-meter sailboat was taking nine paying guests out for a day sail, even though a gale warning was in effect. He gave a safety briefing but left it to his passengers to decide whether to wear life jackets. Conditions were rough, and within a couple of hours they turned back. As they entered the river harbor, the heavy seas from the earlier gale against the ebbing tide produced large breaking waves, and the boat pitchpoled. Three people, none of them wearing a life jacket, were washed overboard. One was found alive by rescuers; two drowned. The skipper was arrested on a manslaughter charge.

  San Francisco, California, May 2010. A couple in their fifties on a weekend cruise in their 33-foot sailboat was approaching the Golden Gate Bridge during only mildly stormy conditions—25 knots of wind and 8-foot seas. Wrestling their boat through the choppy seas, both fell or were washed overboard. A waiter at the Cliff House restaurant saw the boat in distress and called the Coast Guard, which had a search boat on the scene in less than an hour. One body was found in the water, and the other washed ashore the next day.

  Atlantic Ocean, November 2010. A 73-year-old solo sailor encountered a storm some 50 miles offshore east of Florida. His boat’s mast broke in a knockdown and he lost engine power. The sailor did not have an EPIRB but got off a VHF Mayday call before his batteries went dead, which luckily was heard by a ship at sea. The search had to cover a huge area of ocean, but with more good luck the boat was located—with the sailor still alive—after a few days.

  Pacific Ocean, December 2010. Two men from British Columbia, Canada, were sailing in the Pacific off Costa Rica when their 42-foot trimaran was hit by a storm and started to break up in the battering waves. They had only minutes to abandon ship into an inflatable dinghy before the boat sank. Fortunately they had an EPIRB, although there was some confusion in the international search-and-rescue effort, resulting in their drifting for 3 days without food or water before being rescued.

  Atlantic Ocean, September 2011. Four French sailors in a 36-foot sailboat capsized in a storm some 1,400 miles northeast of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The boat was dismasted, but they had an EPIRB aboard. The Canadian rescue center in Halifax and Coast Guard Boston responded, and a Canadian airplane dropped a sea rescue kit that included a life raft. Thanks to the automated mutual-assistance vessel rescue system (AMVER), an oil rig tender nearest their position soon reached and rescued the sailors. The Coast Guard commended the sailors for having appropriate safety gear aboard.

  Atlantic Ocean, November 2011. A 41-foot sailboat left Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for Bermuda with a crew of three. While in the Gulf Stream they encountered unexpected severe weather and waves to 30 feet. The boat was rolled and dismasted while two crew were below; the third ended up in the water, injured and tangled in the rigging. The other two were unable to get him back on board, and he was lost to the sea. Without an EPIRB or a working engine, the other two drifted in the Atlantic for 12 days until, by chance, a tanker passed close enough to see their handheld flares.

  CHAPTER 2

  Some Incidents Can’t Be Prevented?

  After any sailing fatality, questions are asked that center on one primary issue: could it have been prevented? In the huge majority of cases, sadly, the usual answer is yes. The sailor might have acted more wisely, used appropriate equipment, taken evasive action, or avoided the situation entirely. In many cases, the answer is as simple as wearing a PFD; as many stories in this book show, even if the incident itself could not have been prevented, the victim would likely have survived if he or she had remained afloat. Other situations are more complex and raise deeper questions, such as the three stories in this chapter. All involve what is often called a fluke accident, pure chance, like being struck by lightning. The only way to be 100% certain of avoiding lightning is to never be where it strikes—never to sail at all. For a sailor, that’s about as likely as never getting in a car or never going outdoors. And just as chance sometimes seems to play a role in whether an incident occurs, chance also seems to affect whether the individual lives or dies. Yet “chance” seems too simple an explanation, even in the rarer instances where it may be true, and it is always worthwhile to ask the hard questions, to consider all the factors involved, to develop better gear or training or rules. Ultimately opinions will differ, but the acts of asking and considering the options make us all better, and safer, sailors.

  Tangled in Rigging

  The 420 is a centerboard dinghy designed to be sailed by two. At 4.2 meters length overall, with a beam of 1.6 meters, it carries a substantial sail area for its light displacement (80 kilograms) and easily reaches planing speed. It’s a popular boat for youth training and racing and has been a world-class racer since 1975, a youth stepping stone to the Olympic 470.

  The Club 420 is a slightly heavier version that is more commonly sailed in North America, typically in sailing schools, yacht clubs, and collegiate sailing programs. Usually sailed by youth using a mainsail and jib, the Club 420 may also be raced using a spinnaker and one-person trapeze. The trapeze consists of a line or wire from the masthead to a harness worn by the more forward crew to balance the boat against heeling when sailing upwind, as shown in the photo. When the trapeze is not in use, the trapeze wire and its hook are secured near the mast. Significant skill and athleticism are required to use the trapeze.

  These 420 sailors are racing using a trapeze. (U.S. Junior Women’s Double-Handed Sailing in 2008. Photo courtesy o
f the Sausalito Yacht Club race committee boat cameraperson, Roxanne Fairbairn.)

  At age 14, Olivia was a happy young woman, a varsity soccer player at her Maryland high school, and said by friends to be easygoing and carefree. She loved music and sports. Already a skilled sailor, she was a member of her school’s sailing team and was very experienced in the Optimist dinghy. As part of her training she’d learned and practiced how to right both an Opti and a 420 following a capsize.

  In June 2011, she was sailing the 420 as crew for Sarah, another young member of their racing club. This was the first week of practice for them on the Club 420 in their summer sailing camp, and they were training with Arthur, their certified sailing instructor and coach.

  On this day they were to practice with the spinnaker downwind and the trapeze upwind. While Olivia had not yet practiced with the trapeze, she had already sailed the 420 in winds stronger than today. With Sarah on the tiller, Olivia would manage both the spinnaker and the trapeze. The wind on the Chesapeake was good for practice, 5 to 10 knots south to west with only light puffs. Olivia put on her life jacket and adjusted the trapeze harness, for later use, around her waist. She got in the boat and raised the sail.

  Once sailing, they found wind shifts a little stronger than they’d anticipated, but nothing more than they’d encountered before. Their coach set them and the other boats on a windward-leeward race course for the practice.

  After rounding the windward mark, Olivia set the spinnaker on starboard tack. As the wind behind them shifted, they oscillated between a run and a broad reach, Sarah steering to prevent a jibe while Olivia trimmed the spinnaker.

  Well before the leeward mark they prepared to douse the spinnaker. Sitting on the port side, Sarah turned a little farther off the wind to blanket the spinnaker behind the mainsail to lower the pressure on it. Forward on the starboard side, Olivia slid up beside the mast and reached forward and started pulling down the spinnaker.

  The sail was almost halfway down when on a sudden wind shift the boat accidentally jibed. The boom swung fast across the cockpit and the boat heeled sharply to starboard. Olivia was pushed farther forward and out to the side by the boom as the boat heeled but did not tumble backward into the water. Something seemed to hold her on the boat.

  As the port rail rose higher, Sarah leaned back as far as she could, trying to use her weight to counteract the heeling and prevent a capsize. But the boat was rolling too fast and she went into the water as she reached for the centerboard.

  In her life jacket Sarah bobbed right back up. She moved along the hull to grab the centerboard as the boat continued rolling, but the hull was turning turtle already. She reached up, got a grip on the centerboard, worked her toes up onto the rail, and stood. But her weight was not enough to make any difference by herself, and the hull remained inverted.

  But where was Olivia?

  It had been only a few seconds since the capsize and she should have surfaced by now. Sarah looked all around, saw Arthur watching from the fast boat not far off, and waved frantically at him. Immediately he started over. She pulled herself higher on the hull, trying to see into the murky water on the other side of the hull for Olivia, for a hand, anything. Should she dive under? She reached for her life jacket buckles, then looked again into the water, a thick brown-green, and realized there was little she could do alone, plus their coach was almost there. Olivia may have already floated up into the air pocket beneath the capsized hull.

  When Arthur arrived and could keep watch, Sarah pulled herself down under the water, still wearing her life jacket, and into the inverted cockpit. On the other side she found Olivia, not moving, and tried to maneuver her up to the air pocket, but she was stuck on something. After several futile efforts she swam back out to get their coach.

  Arthur had already radioed for help and now jumped in to attempt to free Olivia. She was tangled in the rigging, but the water was too murky to see exactly how she was held. Her trapeze harness had hung up on the hook and twisted around so that he couldn’t at first release it under the pressure.

  Finally he freed it, and they pulled her out and got her quickly into another boat that had responded. He guessed it had been only 4 or 5 minutes since the capsize, but she had no pulse. They started CPR immediately as the boat raced for shore. The 911 call had already been made. An ambulance arrived shortly after they reached shore, and the paramedics took over. Everything possible was done in the ambulance and hospital emergency department, but resuscitation efforts failed.

  While any accidental death is tragic, Olivia’s seems particularly so. She was young and had done nothing wrong. It seemed as randomly cruel and pointless as a lightning strike—worse, even, as she would have sought safe harbor if lightning had threatened.

  Her story was prominent in the news and sailing media for a long time. Inevitably, discussion focused on a range of issues, including equipment, training, age, the responsibilities of sailing schools, safety procedures, and even the nature of risk in any sport. Some speculated that inexperience may have contributed to the accidental jibe or the problem with the trapeze equipment, or possibly that fear caused Olivia to freeze when the problem arose. U.S. Sailing, the governing body for organized racing in the United States, conducted an independent review and issued a lengthy, thoughtful report. It found no fault by anyone involved, and while it made a series of general recommendations for the sport of sailing, it remains far from clear whether this tragedy could have been avoided if anything had been done differently.

  Lost Keel

  The Fastnet! What sailor of age doesn’t know of the Fastnet Race? What sailor who races, who reads, or who simply was in tune with the world in 1979 doesn’t remember the world’s worst sailing disaster and the largest peacetime water-rescue operation? That year, with over 300 boats participating, a severe storm with unexpected hurricane-force winds swept in and decimated the fleet. Fewer than 90 boats finished the race. Almost 200 quit the race to seek shelter. Two dozen boats were caught in the worst of it and were sunk, crippled, or abandoned. Well over 100 sailors were rescued in an effort spearheaded by the Royal Navy and involving literally thousands of personnel. Fifteen sailors died.

  The race runs over 600 nautical miles on the offshore waters off England and Ireland. It has generally been held every 2 years since 1925 and is the culminating event for many professional racers. Several books have been written about it and the 1979 race. In 1985 another dramatic rescue was needed when the keel of a maxi yacht broke off and the boat turtled, trapping six crew for a time under the inverted hull.

  The reputation of the Fastnet, then, is inevitably on the minds of all sailors entering the race. It’s something you can’t help but think about, no matter your experience and background. Regardless of your level of professionalism, you prepare for the Fastnet, and you make sure your boat and equipment—and crew—are all ready for what may come.

  So it was that in 2011 the skipper of Rambler 100 and his 20 crew prepared well for the August race. All were highly experienced, several had sailed in America’s Cup races, and just weeks before they had sailed Rambler across the Atlantic, winning another race in record time. Compared to the conditions they had experienced then, given the forecast for this Fastnet, some of them might even have viewed this race as a piece of cake. They had a great boat, a great crew, and every expectation of another win.

  At 100 feet overall, the super-maxi Rambler, one of the world’s fastest monohull sailboats, had a high-tech contemporary design, including movable water ballast and a canting keel to balance a huge sail plan. Canting means that the long, thin keel with a weighted bulb on the bottom does not simply hang straight down off the bottom of the hull but can be angled up on the windward side to prevent the boat being blown over. Almost half the boat’s total weight of over 70,000 pounds was condensed into the bulb at the bottom of the keel, hanging some 18 feet underwater.

  Nothing unusual happened in the first part of the race. In fact, winds in the low 20s made it almost rel
axing compared to conditions they’d experienced before. At five o’clock in the afternoon when they rounded Fastnet Rock, four crew were off watch below. Several others relaxed on deck while the on-watch crew did their job to maximize boat speed. Waves were 5 to 6 feet, and Rambler launched off the bigger ones and pounded along after a turn upwind.

  Then the crew below heard a terrible crack and grind as the keel broke off when Rambler came off a wave. With all the sound and fury on deck, most of the crew there didn’t realize what had happened until Rambler started going over.

  There was a brief pause when the mast and sails hit the water, then the rolling continued. In less than a minute Rambler had turned turtle, floating upside down, the broken keel stub pointing skyward as the hull pitched in the waves.

  A few of the crew managed to climb over the rail and onto the bottom of the hull as it rolled. All the rest were in the water, including the four who had been below and who had been unable to grab life jackets in the chaos of the cabin rotating 180 degrees before struggling out of the cabin and swimming free of the tangle of underwater rigging and lines.

  Luckily no one was caught in the rigging or otherwise pinned under the boat.

  The auto-inflate function of the crews’ inflatable PFDs had been disabled to prevent buoyancy from trapping them under the boat. This function is designed to protect a sailor who is knocked unconscious and is thus unable to pull the cord manually for inflation. Fortunately all 21 sailors were conscious and those wearing them were able to inflate their PFDs. Later, when giving their recommendations based on this experience, the crew urged not using auto-inflate PFDs. While this does not seem a controversial issue in this instance, there have been other emergencies in which unconscious sailors were saved by their auto-inflating PFDs.