Into the Storm

by Dennis N. t. Perkins

  Joining the two Psaltis brothers was Ed's brother-in-law, John Whitfeld. “Jonno” was given the unenviable job of forward hand, or bowman. As the name implies, the station of the forward hand is in the very front of the boat, where waves come over the highest and hardest. In this position, Jonno was responsible for making sure sail changes went smoothly and for organizing and running the front end of the boat—most of which was underwater much of the time.

  The forward hand has, by most accounts, the toughest job on an ocean racing crew. It's much like being a gymnast or a rock climber: Balance, strength, speed, and the ability to think ahead under pressure are all essential skills. Not only is the job difficult, but being a forward hand on Nuzulu was even tougher than on one of the big maxis. On a small boat, the bowman is constantly underwater and relentlessly knocked around as the boat careens through the waves.

  Forward hands are carefully selected on a racing boat, and Jonno was one of the best. Not only was he nimble, he also demonstrated an unusual ability to withstand and absorb pain. Somehow, Jonno just handled whatever came his way and kept going without complaint. Among a collection of tough guys, he was one of the toughest.

  Jonno's value as bowman was impossible to overstate, but one of his most important duties began after the race was over. He was the official crew exchequer, responsible for handling the communal drinking funds for the celebration in Hobart. It was a much easier job and a lot more fun than being the forward hand.

  The crew was excited to be sailing out of Sydney Harbour, surrounded by a forest of white sails. It was an extraordinary sight. Nuzulu got a great start, and it looked like it was going to be a fun bash and a nice run down the Tasmanian coast. It didn't turn out that way.

  They had a fairly light crossing through the Bass Strait, which was unusual. Nuzulu made it two-thirds of the way across and was one of the top boats in her division. Then a major line squall, a cigar-shaped cloud, hit Nuzulu in the late afternoon.

  As they sailed into the night, the crew was constantly changing the sails to accommodate the uncertain wind. When the wind speed increased, they reefed the sails. The reef points allowed the crew to pull down the mainsail—the big sail behind the mast—effectively creating a smaller triangle exposed to the wind. When the wind slacked, they had to take out the reefing lines. On again and off again, they flogged the main as the sail snapped back and forth in the wind.

  Nuzulu was well into the race, just north of Tasmania and in a very good handicap position, when things started to go seriously wrong. It happened as they sailed through the southernmost part of the Bass Strait, in a treacherous stretch of water called the Banks Strait. Named for an early British botanist, Joseph Banks, his legacy waters were known to be dangerous and, as the sailors sometimes put it, “confused.”

  Nuzulu was sailing on a knife's edge with two reefs in the mainsail. The wind was blowing hard—a steady 40 knots, with higher gusts. It was a lot of wind, though not so unusual for the Hobart. As a precautionary measure, however, they decided to take down the big mainsail and replace it with a storm trysail.

  The storm trysail is a small sail that, as the name implies, is intended to be used in very heavy weather. The sail is small, but the job of rigging it in strong winds is not. All hands were needed for this cumbersome task, and Arthur and Mix were called up from below to help.

  Before they could get their wet-weather gear on, Arthur and Mix heard Ed call out, “Bad wave!” And it was a bad wave. The incoming tide, pushing against the southwesterly wind, had created a rogue wave. It was big, but its size wasn't the only problem. The shape was the ugly part. It went straight up about 20 feet and was covered with white water and foam at the top.

  The crew could feel the boat being moved by the mass of water long before the wave hit. Down below, Arthur and Mix heard the crashing noise of the water as the wave broke over them. The wave hit Nuzulu from the side, and the boat slid down the face of the wave and nearly turned turtle—almost completely upside down. Water rushed through the open cockpit hatch. The mast was submerged, and the keel of the boat—the weighted fin designed to keep it upright—was up in the air.

  Ed was steering and, because of the heavy weather, was wearing a harness for safety. But the ironically named safety harness had wrapped around the tiller used to steer the boat. Ed was trapped, drowning and wondering when and if Nuzulu would right itself. Arthur and Mix were in the water as well, stuck below and kneeling on the overhead of the cabin, which had now become the floor. Arthur's mind raced: What would happen next? Would the mast break? Would they be rolled again? Please come up, he thought, with a silent prayer.

  Up on deck, Bob was in the water just like everyone else but was his usual unflappable self. Floating in the water, he estimated the angle of Nuzulu's capsize to be about 130 degrees. He remembered that the life raft was securely stored in the cockpit, where it could be retrieved in case the boat failed to right itself. Then Bob thought through what might happen next.

  There were three possible scenarios. First, they could be rolled 360 degrees, and the boat could fill with water and sink. Second, the mast could be ripped out by the force of the sea, with the same result. Finally, it was possible that the sail could rip from the pressure. If this happened, the boat would recover and flip back upright.

  It seemed like hours, but in a matter of minutes Nuzulu gave a shudder and chose the last of the three options. She popped right side up, though filled with lots of water. Water was everywhere, shooting down the mast and through the hatch, and showering everyone below.

  Soon everyone was on deck, coughing, spluttering, and swearing. They looked around, expecting that the mast would be gone completely, but it was still in position. The outline of the sail was perfectly in place but—with the exception of the tape at the edges—there was absolutely nothing left of the brand-new sail.

  All the reefing and flogging the night before had weakened the Kevlar material so much that when the wave hit, the sail simply vanished. Had it not given way, the mast would have been ripped out of its base. In theory, the boat might eventually right itself, but that could take a long time. Then the crew would have had no choice but to dive for the life raft in the cockpit and hope for rescue. In view of the alternative, losing the sail was a sacrifice but a small price to pay.

  The crew took stock of their situation. Arthur commented dryly that viewing the boat from the inside while upside down was interesting. Bob surveyed the cockpit and was reassured to see the life raft securely in place. Then he realized that the knife they would have had to use to cut the restraining line was gone.

  When Nuzulu capsized, the knife must have slipped out of its pouch and fallen to the bottom of the Banks Strait. If they had needed to cut the lashings, they would have had to use their teeth—and the knots holding the raft could not be undone easily. Dismissing that unpleasant thought, Bob resolved to tape the knife to the life raft casing in the future.

  Then Bob looked down below. Everything was in complete shambles. Bags were scattered everywhere, and the contents of his navigation station had been emptied when Nuzulu was unceremoniously upended. Bob saw that his precious sextant—the one he used to find their position by the sun and the stars—had come out of its case and was floating around the bottom of the boat.

  Their shot at the Tattersall's Cup was over, gone. A feeling of deep disappointment settled over the crew. With no spare mainsail, they knew they had no chance of winning the race. It was a harsh realization. But their mood turned quickly from disappointment to resolve.

  Arthur, in particular, felt the shift. He had pulled out of two Hobarts before, and he wasn't going to make this a third. The loss of the mainsail now became a challenge. How could they finish the race? If they weren't going to quit, what could they do so that they would be able to say that they finished the fiftieth Hobart?

  No one wanted to pull out of the race, but they needed a sail that would power the boat. Then Huey smiled, and the winds shifted so that they could pu
t up their spinnaker—a sail that ballooned out in front of the boat like a parachute, pulling Nuzulu along behind. Boats were passing them that never would have under normal circumstances, but Nuzulu was still sailing.

  Then the wind shifted again and started coming directly from the front—hard on the nose. They were 40 miles from Tasman Island, with 110 miles to go. Without their large triangular mainsail, Nuzulu was helpless. They zigzagged across the face of the wind, but they weren't making any ground. They couldn't go forward; they could only go sideways. They were losing ground, and, at points, they were actually sailing backward.

  The puzzle of how to finish the race became more complex. They had to devise a way to get power to the back part of the boat where the mainsail used to be. They had no sail material, and it seemed hopeless. Desperate, they tried a number of jury-rigged contraptions, but the sail dynamics weren't right. Even with these concoctions, their forward speed was less than half a knot. At this rate, they would have been lucky to finish the race on the 3rd of January, and it was the 29th of December. They were patient and determined, but not that patient.

  The crew tried for hours, experimenting with every contraption they could think of, but nothing worked. Arthur was persistent to the point of aggravating everyone. He kept suggesting idea after idea. Ed was discouraged. No, that won't work. No, that's no good. No, no, no. Forget about it. We're done. But Arthur kept experimenting until he came up with a solution. In the end, it was so simple. Simple, but nobody had even considered it.

  They had a small sail with a series of eyelets down the front. The holes were designed for severe conditions. If the sail were to pull out of its track, the crew could lash the sail in place. It occurred to Arthur that the eyelets could be used in a different way: With short pieces of line and knots on each end, the sail could be inserted into the track that ran up the mast. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. They started sailing and were going faster. They weren't going to win the race, but they weren't going to drop out either.

  It wasn't going to be easy. Every time they changed course, the wind would shift as well. It was always on their nose. It was as if Huey was testing them. In Arthur's mind, Huey was saying, I'm going to make an example out of you fellows.

  Arthur would not give in. He was not going to fail the test. There were only another, maybe, twenty-four hours to go, and he resolved to stick it out. Yes, he thought, boats are passing us, but let's put that out of our minds. It doesn't matter. Just finishing the race will be great. We have to say that we finished the fiftieth Hobart race.1

  Still, it seemed so unfair. The wind kept shifting, and the more the wind changed, the more frustrated the crew became. It was tempting to give up. They were all thinking, We can be at the pub having a beer in twelve hours or we can continue the race. At this pace, it could be three days with no trophy. We don't need to do all this. We've finished other races, and we will finish future races. Why kill ourselves?

  Even Ed was tired of it. He knew that there was a shortcut to Hobart—through the Schouten Passage then down into the Denison Canal. But taking the shortcut would mean dropping out of the race. Ed turned to Bob and said, “Look, I've had enough of this. I can't handle it anymore with these boats passing us. We're going to be the back end of the fleet, so let's forget it.”

  Mix, standing nearby, overheard the conversation. It was his third Hobart, and he had pulled out of the first two. He wasn't about to relinquish the third. Mix stared ahead and said, “Don't even think about pulling out of this race. I won't forgive you. We have got this far and we have to finish this race. If we do, we will remember this as one of our proudest moments.”

  With his unremitting resolve, Mix shook Ed out of his funk. And as hard as it was, they did keep going. This had become more than a sporting event; it was a nearly impossible psychological challenge. The team had become used to racing at the top of their game, and they had no chance of winning with their jury-rigged sail. It was demoralizing watching other boats pass them, and in the home stretch on the Derwent River things got even worse.

  It was one thing to sail across the Bass Strait, where they had room to maneuver. It was another to navigate a constricted channel with limited control, trying to reach the finish line. By the time they completed the race, more than seventy boats had passed them. It was the only time in the five years of racing that Nuzulu was defeated by an equivalent boat in a major offshore race.

  In spite of their poor performance, the Commodore of the yacht club in Hobart came out with his family to welcome them. Crews of other boats found them as well, and they knew what the crew of Nuzulu had accomplished. That was the victory. It was not about winning the race. It was about setting a goal and never deviating from it.

  It was a defining moment in the history of the team. Though they did not win the race, they accomplished something even more important. They worked together and solved a huge problem. The experience of having finished the race using their skills and resources gave them a new sense of pride. It galvanized a spirit that the crew would need later—and upon which their survival would depend.

  After the race was over, the team sat down over a drink for an intensive postmortem, reviewing everything that had happened over the last few days. Ed was feeling his age after the ordeal. He remarked, half seriously and half sarcastically, “We're getting a bit long in the tooth for a thirty-footer.” Bob laughed. He was ten years older than Ed, so a logical conclusion would be that he had been too old for Nuzulu all along.

  No one argued with Ed—they were ready for a larger and more competitive boat. But what would it take to get a boat that would give them a shot at the Tattersall's Cup? Their new challenge was to find an answer to that question.

  4

  The Midnight Rambler—A One-Off Boat

  It took Ed and Bob a long time to find the right boat. They had always admired a yacht commissioned by a fellow sailor from Melbourne, Bruce Taylor. Taylor's boat, appropriately named Chutzpah, had been custom-built with one thought in mind: winning the Sydney to Hobart Race. Taylor was moving on to a more modern boat, so Chutzpah was up for grabs.

  The boat had some unique features that made it just what the crew wanted in their Christmas stockings. It was sturdy and beautifully balanced, and it had a relatively short, stout mast. Taylor had lost Chutzpah's “stick” twice before doing the Hobart and decided it wouldn't happen again.

  While the shorter mast could be a liability in the lighter winds east of Tasmania, it would be a huge asset when the going got tough. A boat like this would give them the confidence they needed to match any competitor in the rough conditions they would inevitably encounter in the Bass Strait. Chutzpah was much more seaworthy than anything they'd ever had before. It was a one-off boat.

  They bought the boat on the 6th of December, and the Hobart was the 26th. That gave them a little less than three weeks to get the boat prepared for the race. A number of old salts told them categorically that it couldn't be done, but they were determined that the boat would be ready in time.

  Through a series of fortunate coincidences and financial machinations, they got the new boat up to Sydney quickly. It arrived just in time to begin the prodigious task of getting it ready for the Hobart. There were mountains of safety, measurement, radio, and crew qualification checks. And to compound the challenge, they had to quickly familiarize themselves with the boat in Sydney. The alternative would be doing a crash course during the race—far from an ideal option.

  The first time Bill Psaltis heard about the boat was a frantic call from Ed. “Dad, I bought a new boat. It's arriving from Melbourne, and I'm tied up at work. Can you go down and pick it up?”

  Bill agreed to help, but when he saw the boat he was appalled. Unlike the boats he was used to, the bottom was flat with a fin hanging off “like a wind surfboard.” As far as he was concerned, it was not a boat to go to Hobart, and there was not enough time to turn it into one.

  Bill called Ed, and he was adamant. “You're crazy to try to g
et ready,” he insisted. “I've done enough Hobarts to know you can't get a boat ready in three weeks. This is madness—don't do it.” Bill knew his boys well, and he wasn't concerned about their competence. But he was concerned about what the sea could do to a boat, and this new one looked like a Windsurfer.

  To the surprise of no one, Ed was just as stubborn as his father. He was absolutely convinced they could do it. Ed told his father he was confident that they could be ready, and his optimism was infectious. Everyone set to work preparing for the big race. Even Ed's wife, Sue, got involved in getting the new boat ready. And Bill, once he realized his son was really going to do the race, was as committed as everyone else to getting the boat set to go.

  The sails were desperately in need of replacement. Almost all the wardrobe needed to be renewed, and coming up with the money for new sails wouldn't be easy. Looking for divine intervention, Ed approached the Australian Financial Review—Australia's equivalent to the Wall Street Journal—to ask for help. The paper agreed to sponsor the boat, and, backed by The Fin, they scraped together enough money for a new set of sails.

  With a sponsor like the Australian Financial Review, Ed and Bob now had a solid financial platform that would allow them to play in the big leagues. But they were concerned about more than sails. The rigging was a problem, too.

  Lines called runners hold up the mast, especially when the wind is coming from behind, and, if the runners fail, everything comes crashing down. No one was sure how much torture the original runners had been put through. Leaving nothing to chance, Ed decided to have new runners fabricated. It was a decision that, with the benefit of hindsight, may have saved their lives.

  Beyond the sails and rigging, one other thing needed to be renewed: The boat needed a name. Chutzpah was a great name, but it was Bruce Taylor's selection. The decision was Ed's to make, and the choice was easy. Their new boat would be called the AFR Midnight Rambler. The “AFR” came from their sponsor, and the “Midnight Rambler” came from their history.