Fatal Storm (10 page)

Two burly blokes were hanging onto the wheel, keeping the rudder hard over in a desperate bid to get
Marchioness
’ bow back towards course and give it a chance to come upright. A brief lull in the wind and the influence of another wave were enough for the rudder to bite the water – but all too quickly. With most of the 22 crewmembers hanging on to a near vertical deck,
Marchioness
bolted back upright then took off downwind out of control at 20 knots. This time it speared off course and the opposite way – to leeward. A classic “Chinese Gybe” ensued.

The wind filled the mainsail from the opposite side and the boom went whistling across the yacht like a giant scythe. At the same time the spinnaker went aback.
Marchioness
was knocked flat once more. The spinnaker was then filled with water instead of wind. Sheets and lines were tangled across the deck and under the hull.

John Messenger called for a cessation of racing activities. All sails were lowered and the spaghetti-like mess of sheets, wires and lines was tidied up. It was 30 minutes before sails were hoisted and
Marchioness
rejoined the race.

With the north-easterly wind approaching the 40 knot mark Geoff Ross’
Yendys
(Sydney spelled backwards) was starting to do things a Beneteau 53 cruiser-racer had not done before – it was vibrating and humming and at times hitting 20 knots. By 10pm the crew knew it was time to take down the 1.5-ounce spinnaker. If they didn’t there was a chance the rig might
be ripped from the boat, especially if they broached and were knocked down. Just as the drop procedure started
Yendys
went out of control and did broach.

“We were knocked well over,” said Ross. “I was up to my thighs in water in the cockpit. The guy at the front of the boat for the drop, Peter Seary, wasn’t clipped on and was just sucked clean off the bow by the force of water. He was gone. What happened next was almost unbelievable. He shot down the side of the boat in the water and before you could even blink a huge wave picked him up, lifted him over the lifelines and dumped him on the deck at the back of the cockpit. We were in a hell of a mess by then and it would have taken a long while to turn back if we’d lost him.”

By that time the spinnaker had all but taken itself down – blown to bits – except just a small piece that fluttered like a flag from the halyard near the top of the mast. Seary went straight to the mast as though nothing had happened, clipped onto a halyard and was hauled to the masthead to retrieve what was left of the spinnaker.

Surprisingly, there had so far been no retirements. But this was soon to change. One of the race favourites, Ray Roberts’ bright yellow 46-foot sloop
ABN Amro Challenge
, was the first to come to grief. It was spearing through the night when there was a sudden and sharp jolt, first on the keel and then on the deep blade of the spade rudder. They had hit either a large sunfish or floating debris. The yacht careered out of control in an instant. The rudder had been ripped off and their race was run. It was a bitter disappointment for co-designer Iain Murray who was aboard and hoping for a big win.

Around the same time another of the handicap honours contenders, Ron Jones’ near new
Sledgehammer
,
was limping back to port. The steering system had failed, the result of chafing.

Other crews, like that aboard Charles Curran’s 60-footer,
Sydney
, were revelling in what had been a great running race. But
Sydney
’s race end was nigh. At 11.30pm, after averaging 18 knots for the previous 10 hours, the crew heard a massive bang from the stern area.

“We had the spinnaker up and were absolutely flying,” said sailing master Dave Kellett. “While we were searching for the cause of the first bang there was another. We discovered that the lower rudder post bearing had shattered. The rudder post was wobbling around. It didn’t take much thought to realise that if we pushed on, the rudder post could break free and be like a can opener. It would have opened up the hull.”

The spinnaker was lowered, then the mainsail. The
Sydney
crew then sat and waited patiently for the forecast south-westerly change. When it did arrive they set a small headsail, turned the bow northwards and headed for home.

Champion offshore yachtsman Roger Hickman, skipper of
Atara
, had completed 20 of the 21 Hobart races he had entered.

“The first night we had one of the most wonderful runs downwind you could want,” recalls Roger. “There was more lightning in the sky than I’d ever seen. At one stage I asked Peter Gardner, who’s an extremely experienced sailor, if he wanted to have a drive. He said, ‘No, Hicko. It’s your boat so you play with it.’ So play I did. I have to say that at the same time the situation was starting to concern me. I kept recalling what Ken Batt, the meteorologist, said not long before we left,
‘
You’re
going to have a lot on Hicko’. He does a wonderful job representing the Bureau of Meteorology for the race but unfortunately he’s shackled by enormous bureaucracy. He and the other forecasters can’t come out and make a punt on weather and give us a good guide. It always has to be so substantiated.

“What he said left me in no doubt that we were going to have plenty on once the change came. So we were already gearing up for sort of 45 or 50 knots. We have a policy on
Atara
, and any other boat I race for that matter, that at 40 knots you get the mainsail down, roll it up on the boom and then put the cover on it so that it can’t catch the water or blow away. That way you’re as safe as houses. We just run with the headsail because you can get it down quickly if you have to and it doesn’t go anywhere, like blow over the side. Our plan in a blow is to go to the storm trysail, with a No. 4 headsail, whereas most boats go to the storm jib and then to the trysail.”

Different styles of yachts employed different techniques going into that first night. The strengthening nor’easter, which was registering more than 35 knots on some sections of the course, was surprising a growing number of experienced sailors. Even
Winston Churchill
was bowling along with a bone in her teeth – a big white bow-wave that was being cut and curled away before disappearing into the night. John Stanley was enjoying it.

“We set the spinnaker at a gentlemanly pace after turning south at Sydney then proceeded down the coast, knowing all the time that we were going to be hit somewhere along the line that night. We were out to make the most of the nor’easter while it was on and get down the track as fast we could. The breeze got fresher and fresher to the point where we couldn’t overload the old
Winston Churchill
too much. So we took the spinnaker off. It was probably blowing around 30 knots
at that stage. We then poled out a No. 2 headsail until that too proved to be too much. We pulled that headsail off and gybed inshore when the wind started to back towards the north and north west. It was around 35 to 40 knots then.”

The
Kingurra
crew was also concerned with the way the weather was developing.

“It was just beautiful sailing through the afternoon and the early evening,” said Peter Meikle. “We were doing 12 knots over the ground with between two and three knots of current assisting us. At that point we knew we were in for a little bit of a belting but all the time things were beginning to not add up. We had no idea what we were in for – it just didn’t seem quite right. It certainly seemed strange that the north-easterly was continuing to build in strength. I remember thinking when we got down to the 2.2-ounce spinnaker that things were a bit odd.

“The one good thing about it all was that on the first night out, as is always the case on
Kingurra
in a Hobart race, there was a roast coming up. We had this enormous hunk of beef in the oven with all the trimmings. The game for Peter was to see if he could get this very nice roast out of the oven and served before the change came through. That was probably the thing that was occupying the minds of at least half the crew. The other half weren’t planning on eating.”

Up front,
Sayonara
and
Brindabella
were surfing down wave after wave and maintaining amazing average speeds. At the same time the conditions were no longer concurring with the forecast. Larry Ellison sensed things were changing, and changing fast.

“We thought things were getting a little bit screwy when we were hitting 42 knots of wind running away from Sydney. We were doing 24 to 26 knots under spinnaker.”

The downwind rollercoaster ride continued well into the night. As midnight approached many yachts had replaced their spinnakers with poled-out headsails – a more snug rig that was easier to control. The Grand Prix boats were still hanging onto their “kites” until the wind began its steady change in direction towards the west then sou’west. It was between 1am and 3am that the south westerly hit the entire fleet with a vengeance.

“At 0230hrs the wind went to 350 degrees from 020 degrees, the sea became difficult,” recalls Roger Hickman. “We had hit speeds of 19 knots plus, and had done 86 miles in 4 hours and 10 minutes with between two and three knots of favourable current. I felt the fun was up. We downed the 0.9-ounce chute [spinnaker] then put up the jib-top and poled it out. We gybed and then settled down. All boats our size were either behind us or retired.
Ragamuffin
was out of sight and
Ausmaid
was a white light out seaward. The breeze moved quickly in to the west around 20 to 25 knots. With the No. 4 and two reefs we were in good shape.”

“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” was the chilling call that penetrated the airwaves at around 0230hrs on December 27. Crews on race yachts right across the course scrambled to listen to their radios. “This is
Challenge Again
,
Challenge Again
,
Challenge Again.
We have a man overboard!”

The incident had begun when the 41-foot fibreglass production yacht went into a wild broach – a near capsize. The moment the shout went out the very experienced crew did everything they could. Owner Lou Abrahams, a Sydney to Hobart race veteran out of Melbourne and one of Australia’s best offshore sailors, had been hurled across the cabin from his seat at the
navigation station during the broach. He was slightly dazed but immediately clambered back to his seat. His index finger went straight to activating the “MOB” (man-overboard) button on the GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. At least that would define the search area and increase the chance of recovering the man. Watch Captain Fraser Johnston, a similarly experienced ocean racing sailor and professional yacht delivery captain, was jolted from a light sleep.

“I’d just dozed off after finishing my watch,” Johnston recalls. “We’d had very little sleep that night because we’d been sailing so hard downwind. The next thing I knew the boat was broaching and I was pinned in the aft quarter berth. I heard ‘Man Overboard’ and thought, oh Christ here we go.”

As he struggled to free himself from the bunk and fight his way to the cockpit his mind flashed back to the 1993 race. He was aboard
Atara
that year, the yacht that extricated John Quinn from his five-hour, death-defying battle with the ocean in about the very same spot. Like the rest of the crew, Johnston knew that everything needed to go like clockwork if the man was to be recovered. They would probably only have one chance to get him. “I ripped straight up on deck and asked in haste who it was. There was uncertainty, but that didn’t matter. Someone shouted out,
‘
We think it’s young Nick’.” Johnston knew that the helmsman, Col Anderson, was well in control.

“All I saw was a blur go across the boat in front of me,” recalls Anderson. “This body was being hurled through the air. It happened in such a way that he went from the weather side and through the gap between the deck and the boom. Then, with the yacht heeled over so far, he missed landing in the leeward rail. He went straight through the gap and into the tide. I just pulled
the boat straight up onto a reach so we could turn and go back to him on a simple reciprocal course when we were ready. I started the motor and called on the guys to make a quick check to see if there were any lines over the side. We didn’t want to foul the prop.

“Fraser was over the back trying to sort out the man-overboard buoy. It was a tangled mess with thin cord going everywhere. I shouted that there was only one thing to do – get all the bloody mess on board before we put the engine into gear because even a little bit of shit cord is enough to wreck your prop if it happens to get around it. I remember seeing some of the crew coming on deck still half asleep wondering what the hell was going on. All I could do was shout to them to get the mainsail and the jib down.”

Although the crew were trying desperately to get the main and headsail down, somehow the long cord lines keeping all the components of the man-overboard system tied together had tangled around the rudder while the yacht had been lying on its side. When he called for a knife Johnston heard someone finally identify the man overboard. It was “Skippy” – Victorian policeman Garry Schipper – and he had a torch.

Johnston cut the man-overboard buoy free and let it down, then headed for the next most important thing – the engine control. He called on crew to check they had ropes to throw to Schipper when they got close to him. He doubly checked there were no lines in the water then engaged the gear lever. “It was terrific that Skippy still had the torch. But just as with the Quinn rescue, there was much excitement going on – the adrenalin was running. You must make sure you don’t make a silly mistake under those circumstances.”

One crewman, Richard Grimes, had remained with his eyes glued to Schipper from the moment he hit the water.
He pointed to him at all times so Anderson knew where to steer to get back to him.

“We’d pulled down a headsail and stuffed it downstairs, so everyone below had been disturbed,” recalls Garry Schipper. “They were all awake – which turned out to be a good thing. We’d changed from the reacher to the No. 4 – no real drama – and were flogging along with probably 25 to 35 knots coming across the deck from the west. I was coming back to the cockpit from the bow. I had a safety harness on and it was attached to the jackstay. The problem was that there were sheets and stuff across the jackstay so I couldn’t get all the way back. I decided to unclip myself off the jackstay and then re-attach the harness strop to something closer to the cockpit. I wasn’t concerned about doing that because the boat was sailing nicely – we hadn’t broached at any stage.