by Ed Bethune
Lana and I lay flat on our backs on the cabin floor. It is the lowest point of the boat; therefore, it is the safest and most stable place. Our feet were touching; my head was pointing aft and hers was pointing forward. We ate a bit of nourishment, got out our Bibles, and inflated our life preservers. Every so often when Salute settled in the low spot, one of us would turn on a flash-light and read a scripture. Then we would sit up and try to hug and kiss one another, a comical exercise given the bulk of our lifejackets.
We talked about our life together, but mostly we talked about Paige and Sam. Neither of our kids was married yet, so we speculated about them settling down and having children of their own. We talked about the grandkids that we expected to have, and we talked about our mothers, our family, and our faith. I would not say we were cool, calm, and collected but we were doing pretty well considering the circumstances. The interesting thing is we never talked about politics, business, sports, movies, or any of the things that consume people when they think they are going to live forever.
During the night, the noise and motion increased. The storm was worsening. We began to worry that the battering might cause our boat to break up. We prayed often. As the noise got louder and the battering sank into a regular beat, I thought about the morning when I was a teenager and woke up to the irritating sound of a jackhammer that was busting up concrete just below my room at Mama Lewallen’s hotel. I had made a life altering decision that day by deciding to give up incorrigibility in favor of finishing high school. It was time to make another life altering decision.
I had wrestled with the idea of surrendering to a higher power all my life; first as a self-centered Vermilye descendant and later when trying to give my life to Christ. I think it is the hardest part of faith. Lana understood surrender—what it is, and what it is not. I pretended to agree with the concept, but I had never let go the way she had, the way believers should. Now we were at the mercy of the sea. Things we had stored on the boat—personal treasures—did not matter. There was no logical or emotional reason to hold back, to resist, or to deny. Our lives were in God’s hands. She was remarkably calm, at peace. I was a basket case: worried, anxious, uptight, and afraid. I could do nothing. It was time for me to accept God’s promise of salvation, unconditionally.
I surrendered. It was a different kind of surrender than I had ever done. Previously I had always tried to work out a deal. Just let me out of this, Lord, and I will be a good boy. Just let me out of that and I will never do it again, that sort of surrender. We lawyers would probably name it “transactional immunity,” a broad but limited protection from prosecution. No, this was different. I was not looking for a deal, I was ready for full surrender, ready to recognize that salvation is God’s idea, not man’s, and certainly not mine. I was ready, finally, to accept God’s promise, to love Him and live with the Holy Spirit.
Intercession takes many forms, some more dramatic than others. In my case it took thirty-six hours of nonstop jackhammering, and as I gave in and let go, I thought of all the times I had visited prisoners when I was practicing law and when I was a FBI agent. Prisoners—hard cases, many are barely literate—write poetry, lots of poetry. The bulletin boards, the prison newsletters, are full of poetic tributes, mostly to Jesus and mother. When the cell door slams shut behind them, they are at the end of the line, no freedom, no privacy, no hope. They turn to Jesus and mother.
I do not recommend jackhammering or prison for everyone but it does work for those who are bullheaded and stubbornly independent, even one with Vermilye blood.
At daybreak on the sixth day, we emerged from our cocoon to evaluate our situation. No sooner were we topside than a wave of greenish water crashed over the stern of Salute, filling the cockpit and soaking us. I had heard blue water sailors speak of “green water,” but I thought it was a figment of their imagination. It is not, it is something that happens, unexplainably, when the sea is at it meanest.
The sea was wild, confused, and in total control but with daylight, we gained an understanding of how the waves lifted and dropped us. We took turns at the tiller, running before the wind, steering as best we could to keep the bow pointed forward. We learned to ride the waves up, and down without falling off the top of the wave and landing on our side in the bottom of the trough, as we had done all night long. It was a bit of progress, but soon we realized that our new technique of speeding down the wave instead of falling off sideways increased our chance of pitchpoling—the most dreaded way for a boat to capsize. Just thinking about it was scary. I imagined Salute sticking her nose into the water as we sped down to the bottom of a trough, then a following wave lifting her stern up and over the bow, completing the perfect pitchpole. We needed something to slow us down when we surfed down the waves, so we put out a drogue, a small cone-shaped device that trailed behind Salute on a long line. In theory, a drogue—working like a small parachute—will slow a boat down so that it does not speed excessively down the slope of a wave and crash into the next trough, the first step to pitchpoling.
The drogue seemed to help and our fear of pitchpoling lessened, but a new concern arose. Slowing the boat made it easier for the green water waves to catch up to us, break over our stern and fill the cockpit. We were now receiving regular instead of sporadic doses of green water. The work we were doing to steer the boat while sitting outside in the storm was so exhausting that we gave it up and returned to our spots on the cabin floor.
As I lay down, I realized that I was no longer worried, anxious, uptight, or afraid. I, like Lana, had put my life in the hands of the Lord. Surrender works. Praise God!
About nine o’clock we started the engine to see if it would run without overheating. Propulsion would give us better steer-age and we could charge up our batteries. Alas, within five minutes the engine temperature gauge was in the red zone. We had no choice but to shut it down.
We tuned our single-sideband radio to a weather station. The reports said the foul weather would continue and that it might get worse but we could not get an accurate picture of how long the storm would last. Having rested for a couple of hours, I fastened a lifeline to my lifejacket, went topside, and crawled to the mast to see if I could repair the mainsail, which was still hanging over the side of the boat. After a few tries I gave up. It was too hard and too dangerous; the repair would have to wait for the end of the storm.
I could see no other problems on deck, so I went below to make a full inspection of the boat from stem to stern. We were getting water in the bilge, which was unusual for Salute, ordinarily a very dry boat. I needed to find out how water was getting in the bilge, so I opened every compartment and emptied its contents allowing me to see the inside of the hull. The hard work made me a little woozy but I found no holes or cracks in the hull, and the through-hull fittings and hoses appeared to be intact. Still, we had water in the bilge and it had to be coming from somewhere.
The mast on our boat did not rest on the keel at the bottom of the boat; it was stepped on top of the coach roof, so I began a careful check of the bulkheads directly under the mast. There I found several stress fractures and lots of wetness. It appeared to me that the beating we had taken during the night had damaged the foundation for the mast and that seawater was making its way into our bilge because of that. It was just a theory, but it fed our concern that the powerful storm could breakup our boat.
By late morning, I finished my survey of Salute, and we evaluated the risks that we faced. Salute was beginning to show structural damage that might lead to a breakup if we endured another night of pounding. We had electricity in our batteries, but we needed to run the bilge pump, use the radio, and keep our navigation lights burning. Our engine would not run without overheating so we had no way to recharge the batteries. We could conserve electricity by hand pumping the bilge water out of the boat, but that would not save much. Our mainsail was down and repairs to it would have to wait for the storm to pass. We had been fighting with the storm for thirty-six hours and fatigue, a sailor’
s greatest danger, had us in its grip. We were getting regular doses of green water, and we faced the potential of capsizing by pitchpoling or rolling over. We were in a Hell of a mess, and another night would come in eight hours.
We needed relief if we could get it. If the storm was going to last for days or get worse, any one of the challenges we faced could take us down. We would be lost forever. There would be no second chance. We needed a definitive weather forecast for our position, 210 miles south of Cape Cod.
48
GETTING OUT OF TROUBLE
A gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor a man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb.
Around noon on Tuesday, June 12, I called the United States Coast Guard on our single-sideband radio, told them our position, our circumstances, and asked for a reliable weather prediction. Shortly thereafter, the Coast Guard advised us by radio: “A low pressure system is expected to remain stationary leaving conditions as they are until 15 June.”
That was three more days, and other radio forecasts that we heard indicated it might get worse, much worse. It was decision time. Lana and I talked about our options, which is what we always do. We balanced the real risk of catastrophe against an unknown: Could we take another three days of storm in twenty-five-foot seas with winds over forty knots. It was not a hard decision. At 2:00 p.m., I radioed the Coast Guard and told them that we were not sure we could maintain hull integrity or survive the beating we were taking for another twenty-four hours, much less three days. We did not know whether they could help us due to our distance from shore, but we requested their assistance.
The Coast Guard, Air Station Cape Cod, put us on an hourly communication schedule and told us to energize our EPIRB, an electronic positioning device, if our situation worsened or if we were unable to communicate for two successive radio checks.
Unbeknownst to us, the Coast Guard signaled one of it cutters, Tampa, to head in our direction. These vessels ply the waters daily, in good weather and bad, waiting for such a call. They also told a merchant vessel, Atlantic Huron, of our predicament. Later we learned that neither of these ships could reach us until after dark. They were twelve to eighteen hours away. Moving from a bobbing, twisting thirty-one-foot sailboat to a larger vessel at night, in rough seas was not a happy prospect but we prepared ourselves to do whatever the Coast Guard advised us to do.
The Coast Guard keeps its cards close to the vest, and they know what they are doing. They have learned it is not wise to disclose how they intend to make a rescue until they are certain they have a plan that will work. It is a good policy. Sailors in peril on the sea need honest information, not false hopes. At 4:25 p.m., the Coast Guard launched a HU-25 Falcon jet to search for us. The pilot flew to our last known position and instituted an expanding square search, but he could not see Salute. It is hard to see a small white sailboat against the backdrop of an unruly sea with huge waves and whitecaps. The Coast Guard launched a second Falcon jet and it headed to our area to continue the search. The pilot of the second search plane had better luck—he spotted Salute at 6:38 p.m., just two minutes after arriving on the scene. He established contact with us on our single-sideband radio and told us to turn our VHF radio to Channel 16, which I did. His voice came in loud and clear; it was a wonderful sound. We knew he must be close since we were talking on VHF, so we hustled up the ladder into the cockpit.
It was a sight to see! There were two jets circling and a rescue helicopter was hovering low above, just slightly behind us. Lana and I broke into a cheer and started waving. I finally saw what my angel looks like. She is big, orange and white, and the blades that circle inside her big halo make a loud whoosh-whoosh-whoosh beating sound. It was no surprise to me that the noisy, thumping sound had the cadence of a jackhammer.
The recorded history showing how the Coast Guard coordinated the search planes, crews, and rescue helicopter hovering above us is a testament to the competency of our men and women in uniform. Their motto, Semper Paratus, pledges that they are always ready and their hymn says they are ready to “do or die, through howling gale, shot or shell.” Thank God for the United States Coast Guard.
At 4:30 p.m., before the search plane located us, the Coast Guard sent an HH-3F Helicopter with a crew that included a rescue swimmer on a short flight from Air Station Cape Cod to Nantucket Island. The helicopter topped off with fuel on Nantucket Island, which is thirty miles closer to where we were. They did that because the HH-3F helicopter has limited range. Stopping at Nantucket would give the crew more time at the rescue site and a better chance to return safely. We were 210 miles south of Nantucket. There was no way a helicopter could fly that far, search for a vessel that was hard to see, conduct a full-scale rescue operation, and then fly back to land. That is why they send search planes ahead of the helicopter, to find and pinpoint the exact location of the vessel in distress.
The HH-3F left Nantucket and headed to our last reported site before the second Falcon jet search plane spotted Salute. If the Falcon jet had not found us, the helicopter would have aborted the mission and returned to its home base. There would have been no choice but to leave us where we were to spend another night in the storm. As it was, the helicopter, benefitting from a following wind, arrived on scene at 6:40 p.m., exactly two minutes after the search plane pinpointed our position. The perfectly coordinated response meant that the helicopter would have up to forty-five minutes to make the rescue. There was no time to spare. The helicopter would have to leave the site in forty-five minutes whether we were on board or not.
Fortunately, the Coast Guard has a training program, Safety at Sea, designed to teach civilian sailors how to deal with the challenges they will face on the high seas, especially the mechanics of rescue. Lana and I had attended such a session in Annapolis before we set out on our voyage. The main feature of the program we attended was a rescue at sea by helicopter. “How fortunate is that,” I thought to myself.
The wonderful sound coming through our VHF radio said: “Sailing vessel Salute, this is Coast Guard 2121, do you read me?” We were waving to the jets and the crew of my angel. We were ecstatic!
“Yes, Coast Guard 2121, we read you loud and clear.” I had so much excitement in my voice that the pilot of CG 2121 said, “Please listen to our instructions and do exactly what we say.”
“Roger that,” I said, using the radio lingo I had learned in the FBI and Marine Corps. CG 2121 then said he was going to hand me off to the crew of the helicopter and immediately we heard this, “Sailing vessel Salute, this is Coast Guard 1475, do you read me?”
“Yes, loud and clear,” I responded. Then the crew of the helicopter told us what they planned to do, and what they expected of us.
A helicopter cannot get close to a sailboat that is rolling wildly in the sea because the rotor blades might hit the sailboat’s mast or rigging. Therefore, the crew told us they could not hoist us directly from Salute. We would have to get into the water and put some distance between the sailboat and us. They said we would need to launch our inflatable life raft, but leave it tied to the boat. The plan was for us to jump off Salute into the life raft. The rescue swimmer would take us one by one from the life raft to a position well away from Salute where we would get into a metal rescue basket that the helicopter would hoist up and through the wide-open cargo door.
I radioed that we had seen a demonstration of the operation at Annapolis, albeit in milder weather conditions, and they were pleased to hear that. Nevertheless, they wanted us to listen carefully and not get ahead of the way they wanted to do things. The crew then radioed, “Due to high seas, we might not be able to complete all or part of the rescue mission, and we have a narrow window of time we can stay here. If we cannot complete the rescue, you will have to pull the life raft back to the sailboat and wait there for further communications. Do you understand?”
The last part of the message, about having to spend another night on Salute, gave new meaning to the cliché: Time
is of the essence.
I immediately unlashed the life raft that we had stowed on the stern of the boat and kicked it into the ocean. When it drifted as far away from Salute as it could the line that held it grew taut and set off a CO2 cartridge that blew off the plastic cover, and the life raft inflated automatically. The life raft was five years old, but we had taken it to Annapolis for updating and servicing just a month before we set sail. It worked perfectly, the bottom inflated first followed by a canopy designed to afford protection from the elements—so far so good.
Now it was time to jump off Salute onto the life raft. I pulled the life raft as close as I could and Lana climbed over the stern rail and made ready to jump. We had never used the raft, but we had seen demonstrations of how to deploy and use them. The recommended technique for getting onto a life raft is to dive right on top of it instead of trying to climb into it. Lana, now in position, executed a beautiful swan dive, a perfect ten.
The impact pulled the line from my hands, but once inside the life raft, Lana pulled it back close to Salute and I made my dive, complicated a little by the fact that Lana was already in the life raft and I needed to miss her. I did not get a perfect ten; maybe a six-point-five, but it worked. Now we were both in the life raft, and it had drifted to the end of its lanyard. We were ready for the next step.
While we were getting into the life raft, the helicopter crew lowered a rescue swimmer, Petty Officer Rod Parker, into the raging sea. From our new perspective, right on the water with a helicopter hovering close and low, we got a new appreciation for the men and women of the Coast Guard. The waves were twenty-five to thirty feet high with no pattern to their rise and fall. The howling wind was blowing the top of the waves sideways as they crested. It takes real courage to be a Coast Guard rescue team, in the air or in the water. The bravery of Petty Officer Parker was special to us because our son, Sam, was for ten years a rescue swimmer in the United States Navy.