Suddenly Overboard

by Tom Lochhaas

  Gales tonight, he was thinking, but at least they were reaching now instead of beating. Still, he anticipated a long night. He left the two reefs in.

  Only once more did he ask Hank to take the helm, when he went below for his foulies, and almost immediately he regretted it. The guy just couldn’t steer! An accidental jibe seemed likely any moment under Hank’s hand, and the shock of that—or of being rolled by a backwinded main if they tied in a preventer—might bring down the rig. And the guy still wouldn’t put on a life jacket.

  At 4 A.M. the radio reported steady 38-knot winds in the Solent and gusts approaching 50. Out here in deeper water the waves had built only to 2 meters and were full of curling white horses, but William was thinking ahead to the Chichester Bar. He checked the tide chart. “Looks like we won’t make it before the ebb,” he told Hank. “In this blow the bar will be breaking on the ebb, and I don’t think we want to get caught in there. We’ll have to stand off until the wind drops or until slack.”

  “We’re almost home free,” Hank growled. This time William couldn’t see his eyes in the dark space under the dodger. “She’s a good boat—we’ll go on in.”

  They could wait for morning light, that would help some, William thought, but by then the ebb would reach its peak and it would be breaking heavily over the bar. “At least put on your life jacket and a tether,” William said. He wanted it to sound like an order from the captain, but not so much so that it would antagonize the owner.

  He was happy to see the other man go below then. But in a few minutes he came back out, still without a life jacket or harness. It had now started raining, and the water stung William’s eyes whenever he glanced back at a following sea. With no protection from the dodger with the wind aft, Hank unrolled his jacket hood and covered most of his face.

  William squinted to peer forward in the rain and dark at the Chichester Bar beacon ahead, trying to judge the waves. The depth-finder and his handheld GPS showed they were getting close. The seas were building, lifting the stern higher and slewing them sideways, but William was able to steer each wave as it passed, walking the delicate line between broaching to port and jibing to starboard.

  Then a big wave struck just before they reached the bar, as the water heaved up over the rising sea bottom. When the stern began to lift he instinctively looked back over his shoulder, not even seeing the wave at first in the dark because its white curling top was so high—it had to be 6 meters. Before he could even think, it broke and slammed the port quarter with massive force, knocking the boat down to starboard and flooding the cockpit with water. He held on as best he could, but was knocked loose. He felt his harness tighten around his chest as his shorter tether went tight, and he threw one arm over his head for protection and closed his mouth and eyes against the water.

  The boat must have been knocked right over 90 degrees, he realized later, because just before it rolled back up, he’d slipped and started to fall to his left but instead bumped his shoulder against the port cockpit seat vertical beside him.

  Hank was gone, thrown or washed overboard. In the white foam of the departing wave William saw him for a second in the water, only some 7 or 8 meters behind, but the boat was quickly blown away from him. William grabbed the dan-buoy from its rail mount and threw it toward him but lost sight of the man in the water.

  Acting automatically, William turned the boat hard to port to bring the bow up and released both sheets when the boat was as close to the wind as he could get it. In the turmoil of the waves breaking over the bar he’d never be able to reach Hank under sail. He turned the key and jabbed the starter button, barely able to hear the engine grinding in the roaring wind, but the engine would not catch. He tried again, tried everything he knew, then gave up and made a Mayday call on the radio.

  As he gave his location and described the man in the water, the boat shook as it was slammed aground by a wave. It quickly rolled onto its side, driven into a groin in the shallows. William took a few seconds to get his bearings—to calculate the water depth and the waves and the distance to shore—and then unclipped his tether, yanked the cord to inflate his PFD, and jumped overboard.

  It took a long time to scramble up on the shore, and he lay on the beach panting as the first rescue boat roared out of the harbor headed for the bar.

  Soon he heard a helicopter.

  They found Hank’s body an hour later.

  WingNuts

  At age 51, Mark had been sailing his whole life along with his younger brother, Peter. As kids they raced small sailboats on lakes, graduating to larger boats and races on Lake Michigan and elsewhere. No question, they were highly capable sailors. Previous to the 2011 Race to Mackinac, Mark had done the two-day Chicago–Mac five times and Peter four, along with dozens of other races. Suzanne, Mark’s girlfriend, and one of the crew this year, was doing her third Chicago–Mac and had also sailed across the Atlantic. When you looked at their credentials they seemed like professional racers, but they held jobs in the “real world.” Still, they seemed sailors first, and were skilled, able competitors.

  Mark and Peter were also members of a close-knit extended family. With cousins John and Stanton, they’d purchased Wing-Nuts, their current entry in the race, and they sailed it together, along with Peter’s son. In photos they looked like a poster family for club racing.

  They were excited for another Chicago–Mac and had hopes of winning the sport-boat class.

  Held by the Chicago Yacht Club, the Chicago–Mac has been an annual event for a century, making it one of the oldest organized races in the United States. Well over 300 sailboats usually compete, with 345 registered in 2011. Lake Michigan, the race site, is scarcely a “lake” in any sense of that word except for being fresh water. Conditions on the 333–nautical mile course across the length of Lake Michigan to Lake Huron rival those of an ocean and often change radically over the 2 to 3 days most boats need to complete the course. In July the only thing predictable about the weather is that it will likely be unpredictable—at least to some extent. Thunderstorms and squalls, often violent, can rapidly sweep the area, sometimes seemingly faster than radar and the best forecasting can see them coming. Boats are often damaged and crew injured. But for all this, there had never been a race-related death.

  WingNuts under sail in 2010. (AP Photo/G. Randall Goss)

  Suzanne, Mark, his three co-owners, and three others comprised the crew of WingNuts, a modified Kiwi 35, a sailboat that looked very unusual at first view. Like the fast racing boats used in the Volvo Ocean Race and many others, the Kiwi had a lightweight planing hull that was ballasted primarily by a heavy bulb at the bottom of a long, thin keel. At 35 feet, WingNuts displaced only some 4,000 pounds, about 1,400 of which was ballast. The primary beam of the hull was only a little over 8 feet, providing minimum wetted surface, and the boat carried a proportionally large amount of sail.

  But what made a Kiwi unusual was its “wings,” which extended out 3 feet from the hull on both sides, a couple feet above the water. While on a typical race boat the crew sat on the rail on the windward side using their body weight to help keep the boat upright, on a Kiwi the crew could move their whole bodies out of the cockpit far to the side to provide greater leverage. When well balanced by the combined righting forces of the keel and crew weight, the boat could carry more sail without being blown over, and thus sailed very fast.

  With a crew of eight on WingNuts, it was important to maintain an exact balance of weight. But Mark and his crew were very experienced and had sailed her often enough over 4 years to make their movements a choreographed art. They had also added some 300 pounds to the keel ballast to increase stability.

  Sailing on WingNuts was very fast—and very exciting.

  And they suspected this Chicago–Mac would be an exciting one. A south wind was forecast for the Saturday start, allowing them to fly up the northeast course under a spinnaker. Thunderstorms were predicted for later on Sunday, possibly severe, but they were ready for that too.


  Winds remained fairly light most of Saturday, but they enjoyed a good pace with the spinnaker. The eight of them alternated watches, got some sleep, and worked flawlessly as a team. Mark was grinning all the time, and Suzanne smiled whenever she watched him at the helm. She was the only woman on the boat, one of only two crew outside their extended family, but she pulled her weight like everyone else and had earned their respect. One of the great joys of a race like this was the bond everyone felt as they worked together.

  Except for the reddish sky at dawn, Sunday began much like Saturday. The wind was still southerly but getting stronger, and WingNuts was simply flying under the big spinnaker. Everyone had slept at least some, and the adrenaline countered whatever fatigue might have been setting in. They all felt fine, the younger crew still excited if a little apprehensive about the radio’s thunderstorm predictions. Late in the afternoon they saw clouds building to the west.

  The storm moved in after sunset, and the wind began clocking around toward the west and building. Lightning flickered to the west and southwest. Gradually the wind increased even more as they watched the radar and saw storm cells moving in. When they put the second reef in the mainsail and changed to the smallest jib, the lightning was so bright they scarcely needed the spreader lights to see what they were doing.

  The shifting wind confused the seas and made steering trickier, but they’d trained for this and maintained good control. Except when they were below in the cabin they kept tethered to the jackline down the center of the cockpit. With 6-foot tethers from their harnesses to the jackline, there was no way anyone could go over the side.

  Then the wind rose rapidly to 30 knots and beyond and they dropped the main entirely and tied it securely to the boom. The small jib was enough to maintain steerage on port tack. Thunder cracked almost constantly now as WingNuts shuddered through the gusts. Windblown rain and spray blasted them from every angle. All they could do was try to keep the boat under control until the storm passed.

  Seated on the starboard side, Suzanne was watching forward when off the port bow the blackness between lightning flashes turned white, as if the air had become sudden dense fog. She fingered the titanium knife she always wore on a lanyard around her neck; you never knew when you might have to cut yourself free from a line or even your tether. Above the shrieking wind she heard shouts and saw Mark look up from the bright blob in the center of the radar screen, already scrambling for the jib furling line and jerking it back to roll in the little jib fast, when a terrible gust caught them from port as WingNuts came off a wave. The port wing rose up fast and Mark tumbled across the cockpit onto Suzanne as the wing lifted higher, and then they were going over. She grabbed Mark and struggled for a handhold on anything, but the wing was above them now and they went backward in free-fall as everything was blotted out above. The last thing she felt before blacking out was the jerk of her harness on her shoulders and back as the tether snapped tight.

  The mast struck the water and kept going. The righting force of the heavy keel bulb raised high above the water was no match for the near-hurricane-force sustained gusts and crashing waves against the port wing. The boat just kept rolling. In a flash it had turtled, and lay upside down in the troubled water.

  The lightning helped those struggling under the surface to orient themselves. Quick-release tether snaphooks allowed some to free themselves quickly from their harnesses and surface beside the boat, while others needed help. Everything happened very quickly in the chaos of water and thunder, and the crew was going mostly on instinct, fighting to escape the water. One crew had been in the cabin and had to find his way out and down through the tangle of lines and rigging.

  Within a couple of minutes six crew had their heads above water and some were able to clamber up onto the hull. The boat tossed in the waves, and the rain blown hard by the wind was blinding. Peter saw that Mark and Suzanne were still missing and pulled his way around the boat, plunging his head below the surface to look below the boat. At one point he spotted Suzanne under the hull, and in a burst of lightning saw her mouth was open, her eyes open and lifeless. He could not reach her tether to release it but knew it was too late anyway. But there was still hope for Mark, who might be alive in an air pocket beneath the boat or might be drifting in the water nearby.

  The other non-family crew clung to the hull thinking of his mother. While pregnant with him she had lost her husband, the father he’d never met, to drowning in another Lake Michigan boating accident.

  Crew on the inverted hull had already activated their PLBs (personal locator beacons) when Peter finally gave up his search for Mark. The thunderstorm cell that had struck them was slowly moving on, the lightning a little farther away, but the wind was still strong and waves were still washing over the hull. It wasn’t dark enough for them to see the running lights of the nearest sailboats, but even though they felt alone in the storm they were blowing the whistles attached to their PFDs and waving their strobes and flashlights.

  WingNuts floating upside down the day after the incident. (AP Photo/John L. Russell)

  The crew of a sailboat a half mile away heard their whistles and, although battling the thunderstorm as well, was able to rescue the six WingNuts crew long before the Coast Guard’s rescue boat and helicopter reached the area. Several other sailboats also joined in the search for anyone missing in the water near the capsized boat.

  As soon as the crew of the rescuing boat learned of the missing two sailors, they radioed a request for rescue divers, but Peter knew it was too late. Divers later recovered the bodies of Mark and Suzanne, who was still tethered to the center jackline. Both had suffered head injuries when the boat flipped to starboard and the port-side wing crashed down on them.

  U.S. Sailing conducted a thorough inquiry and issued a report 3 months later, which some of this retelling is based on. Recommendations from the panel’s experts included considerations for increased safety training and safety gear, such as types of tethers, but the most significant issue focused on a sailboat’s stability index, or its ability to recover from a knockdown or capsize.

  The implications were that WingNuts’ crew were well prepared and did everything right but that the boat itself was not an appropriate design for such conditions. In races, the organizers can decide what entries to allow based on the boat, required equipment, crew characteristics and experience, and other factors. In recreational sailing, however, the sailors themselves decide what conditions their own boats, and their own experience and gear, can withstand. These are personal decisions, of course, and sometimes “fluke” accidents do occur, but usually, as most of the stories in this book show, the final outcomes could have been prevented.

  Rally Boat to Bermuda

  Every fall a large number of cruising boats leave the U.S. East Coast and head for the Caribbean to spend the winter there. Some experienced sailors choose to go on their own, with or without the assistance of professional private weather forecasters and route advisers, while others, often those making this passage for the first time, opt to join one of the organized rallies. The North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC), which departs Newport, Rhode Island, and generally routes first to Bermuda, is a popular choice for sailors in the Northeast. Rob and Jan Anderson, aboard their Island Packet 380, Triple Stars, joined the fall 2011 NARC in part for the comfort and fun of being part of the fleet and in part for the promised weather and route planning expertise.

  The Andersons were not inexperienced sailors, however. Years before, they had sailed south from California, through the Panama Canal, and up to Maine, where they had been living before starting their adventure to the Caribbean.

  Weather is the major issue for sailors headed south to the islands. First you have to wait for the end of hurricane season, which is why the NARC and the Caribbean 1500, another rally of cruising boats, which leaves from Hampton, Virginia, both begin in November. Then you have to wait for a good weather window between the frequent fall fronts that sweep the northwestern Atlantic.
Because the winds are generally from the east when you approach the Caribbean, you need to make your easting before getting too far south, one reason many boats head east first for Bermuda, and then sail almost due south. This route involves planning a course for crossing the Gulf Stream, a violent area in a northerly blow, as well as for avoiding adverse winds and gales on the way to Bermuda.

  The 2011 NARC left Newport on November 1 with a promising but narrow weather window and a less than perfect long-range forecast, though conditions are seldom ideal. But it looked reasonable for the 630–nautical mile passage to Bermuda as long as all the rally boats got there before the weather worsened. The Andersons anticipated some high winds and seas but felt confident in their boat and skills. Later there would be some debate about how good the forecasting and route advice actually were.

  Triple Stars made good time at first, although slower than most of the boats in the rally, and crossed the Gulf Stream easily. By the fifth day, however, the wind had risen and the Andersons decided to heave-to in order to take no chances and get some needed rest. After all, it was just the two of them, without other crew to stand watch and give them more sleep. Heaving-to is a time-honored method that essentially stops the boat safely, requiring less attention. For 2 days Triple Stars drifted slowly while the rest of the rally fleet sailed on. Jan Anderson wrote in her online blog to family and friends, “So far I must say the weather has been stinky . . . the past couple of days have been tough, but we are hove to and resting today . . . we are both good . . . do not worry . . . we are doing fine.”

  But to the south, a tropical storm was brewing.