Fatal Storm (20 page)

Midnight Special
had suffered further structural damage in the second roll-over, and the six crew trapped inside the upturned hull weren’t surprised to feel the water surging in as the yacht settled. They could sense the water level creeping up their bodies. Their problem was they didn’t know if, or when, it would stop rising.

Neil Dickson was below. “We just heard a crash and then we were rolling around and tumbling in heaps of water again,” he recalls. “Then it stopped and we all popped up, standing in near darkness on what had been
the cabin ceiling. I was closest to the companionway. Some light was filtering through and I figured we had to get out. There were two guys on deck, obviously tied on deck, and probably trapped. It was no good the rest of us being trapped in the hull. The yacht was certainly making no move to come upright. She had a lot of water in her – waist deep – and just seemed to be sitting there. She didn’t seem to want to move. I didn’t stop to think about whether or not we were going to sink. I just decided I was going to get out. The companionway hatch slide was gone and the bottom storm board was in place. The top board wasn’t in and I guessed the gap was enough for me to get through, so I dived for that. I swam until I was about halfway through the hole and got stuck. I couldn’t go any farther, forward or back. I had apparently tangled myself in Bill Butler’s safety harness. I just got angry with myself then,
‘Shit, this is how it happens. This is the way it goes, hey? I’m going to drown. That was a pretty stupid move. I’ve left a perfectly good piece of air inside the boat and put myself under here.’
I was still fighting pretty hard to get through the gap. I was trying to get out into the cockpit. I remember thinking to myself that even if I got through the companionway I wasn’t going to be able to get out from under the boat because of all the associated garbage that was hanging around there. I didn’t have time to think about it for long because next thing the boat went ‘plop’, back up on its feet again. I ended up lying with my back on the cockpit floor and my legs still inside the cabin. I could see Bill tangled up and pinned by the boom. He was outside the lifelines.”

Gary Ticehurst and cameraman Peter Sinclair were just recovering from seeing a crewman – Phil Skeggs – lying
dead in the cockpit of
Business Post Naiad
when they heard that
Midnight Special
, which was close by, was being abandoned. He plotted the position and headed the ABC helicopter towards that point. “I kept saying to myself, how many people are we going to lose in this race? That was the trauma. When we got to
Midnight Special
we saw some fantastic rescue work being done by the SouthCare helicopter from Canberra. It was still blowing around 50 knots. Each time the paramedic went into the water he had to fight with the winch wire getting caught around his legs, arms and throat. He was also being smashed around by the waves. I said to Peter, ‘Somebody’s going to die in the water just being rescued. This is crazy’. But they had to try to do it. It was the only way these people could be rescued.”

When
Midnight Special
came upright it was closer to sinking than staying afloat. The water was just below galley bench height. With the cabin agape it would take only one more big wave over the top for it to submerge. It was reconfirmed that the liferaft was in the cockpit and ready to go. The next priority was to get people off as quickly as possible.

After recovering five crewmembers, including Carter and Griffiths, the SouthCare helicopter turned and flew away, much to the amazement and consternation of the four remaining on deck. They guessed the chopper was running out of fuel and they were right. They turned the EPIRB back on again and gathered at the stern with the liferaft between their legs. About 30 minutes after the first chopper left another arrived and circled
Midnight Special.
It was the Victoria Police Air Wing. The chopper had joined the search soon after 5am. Senior Constable Darryl Jones, Senior Constable Barry Barclay and Senior
Constable David Key were initially directed to search for
B-52
, but while en route were redirected to
Midnight Special.

Their rescue technique was a little different to that adopted by SouthCare. In the first rescue the crew jumped into the water and the yacht was allowed to drift away before the paramedic moved in. The police technique was to position David Key in the water about 10 metres astern of the yacht then have a crewman jump into the water. They would then swim towards each other and hook up for the lift. It appeared to be a quick and efficient method. The entire operation went very smoothly. After each crewman stepped off the yacht it was little more than 30 seconds before he was secured in the rescue strop and lifted from the water.

After three rescues were completed Key was exhausted and vomiting sea water. He had been hammered by the 50-foot waves every time he went down the wire. He took a brief respite while the chopper did a circle around the yacht, then he collected the last crewman.

“As we were being lifted back to the helicopter I watched the yacht sink,” said Key.

Peter Carter’s back injuries kept him in a spinal bed for two weeks while shock impacted heavily on the other crewmembers. Six weeks after the rescue Bill Butler was still feeling a high level of emotional trauma.

“My doctor says it’s shock. If I knew what it was, and I could fix it, I would. I’m just not performing like I should be. I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate. I’m certainly more forgetful than I ever used to be.”

The nine crewmembers got together for a reunion four weeks after the event. When it was learnt the SouthCare helicopter had carried out part of the rescue
and that they had some female paramedics on board, a friend asked Neil Dickson whether he had had “one of those nice, pretty young girls” come down and rescue him.

“No,” Dickson replied, “but a six-foot-four, 15-stone policeman looked bloody good to me.”

D
espite being a relative newcomer to offshore sailing, Rob Kothe’s extensive competitive gliding experience held him in good stead when it came to reading and reacting to adverse weather conditions. He understood the synergy between the two activities and loved the sense of freedom and adventure they offered.

“It’s the same sport. You spend a lot of time looking at the sky and understanding meteorology. In a sailplane you work the sea breezes over the mountains while in ocean racing you work the sea breezes off the coast. Both sports are also similar in that they are non-contact – well, most of the time at least.”

Family and business commitments kept him out of sailing immediately after he moved to Sydney from the bush in 1980, but in 1993 he began taking part in twilight regattas on Sydney Harbour aboard a yacht his sister was racing. He was soon hooked and after a few experiences on charter yachts went out in 1997 and bought his first offshore racing yacht, a 40-footer named
Witchcraft II.
He took it to Hamilton Island Race Week and although squarely trounced, he learnt a great deal about offshore racing. The next outing was the 1997 Sydney to Hobart in which
Witchcraft II
fared far better,
coming a healthy divisional second to
Yendys.
Kothe had promised his crew that if he did well in that race he would “step up“; find a better boat and get serious about ocean racing. He honoured that promise.

At 5am on the morning after the bulk of the fleet had arrived in Hobart that year, Kothe began his search for a new yacht. He carefully inspected
Quest
,
Brighton Star
and numerous others, standing for up to half an hour on each vessel to get a feel for them. He returned to Sydney and after consulting with a yacht broker decided that the Melbourne-based 43-footer
Brighton Star
, owned by David Gotze, was the one. He bought the yacht and had it registered in its original name,
Sword of Orion.

First launched in 1993,
Sword of Orion
was a sleek, state-of-the-art yacht designed by the American Reichel/Pugh group. Like so many offshore racers of this era, it incorporated a long open cockpit designed to maximise crew efficiency. The most outstanding feature in the cockpit was the large tubular aluminium steering wheel with a mass of spokes. Its diameter saw it stretch almost from one side of the cockpit to the other. It was a thoroughly modern and cleverly-designed yacht and Rob Kothe was certain it would be competitive.

The 1998 Hayman Island Big Boat Series and Hamilton Island Race Week, both in Queensland’s tropical Whitsunday Islands region, were the first targets. On the way up to Queensland the boat suffered a broken rudder, which ruled out winning the Hayman Island event, but after repairs Kothe and his crew were in tip-top form again and had a resounding win at Hamilton. Darren “Dags” Senogles had joined the yacht as “full-time yachtmaster” prior to the series. Kothe admired him because in Kothe’s words, “[Senogles] treats a boat like it’s his own”. Following the Whitsundays campaign, preparations began for the 1998 Sydney to Hobart.

Having warned the rest of the fleet about the horrendous conditions they were experiencing during the afternoon of the 27th, Kothe and the
Sword of Orion
crew began monitoring their own position even more closely. Kothe was busy listening to the radio and had a reading of 982 on the barometer from Wilsons Promontory. He was concerned a number of yachts hadn’t responded to the skeds –
Brindabella
hadn’t reported her position;
Ausmaid
had been missing for two skeds and
Team Jaguar
had not reported at all. The sailing conditions were quite extraordinary and the wind was behaving erratically, gusting from 60 knots at the bottom of a wave to 90 at the top. It would also drop without warning to a relatively meagre 50 knots, leaving the crew scratching their heads and thinking they were perhaps out of the worst of it.
Sword of Orion
’s report on conditions at the height of the storm said everything:

Average winds during the storm 65 knots at 250 degrees magnetic. Strongest wind 92 knots at 250 degrees magnetic. Average wave height 12 metres. Biggest wave we encountered 20 metres coming from 240–250. Current of about 3 knots running north.

The last point meant this region of Bass Strait, where the storm had exploded, had become a massive whirlpool. The strong current that had been racing down the south coast of NSW had taken a giant lick into the Strait.
Sword of Orion
was down to a storm jib by this stage and certainly didn’t need or want any sort of trysail. Adam Brown, one of the strongest young men in the crew, had valiantly steered the yacht for five hours during the middle of the day, before relinquishing the job to Steve Kulmar. Kothe described Brown’s effort as nothing short of heroic. A
short while after Kulmar took the helm Glyn Charles went on deck to discuss their situation. Charles remarked dourly that people die in these sorts of conditions.

The pair talked about retiring but Kulmar pointed out that eight or 10 miles in front it might be only blowing 50 knots or less and would be manageable. But of course they could only speculate what was ahead of them, and when the barometer flew across the cabin and smashed, they had no way of judging just how low the pressure system was. Kulmar suggested Charles take the wheel while he talked about the situation with Kothe. After some discussion Kulmar and Kothe decided they would in fact have to retire, so they called the
Young Endeavour
and Lew Carter immediately rebroadcast the message to the rest of the fleet.

“We’d worked out a course which had nothing to do with going towards Eden,” recalls Rob Kothe. “It was more about going at sort of 320 degrees. We wanted to make sure for safety’s sake that we were presenting the yacht to the waves at the right angle. It varied somewhere between 60 and 65 degrees, but the waves were coming through with a variation of about 30 degrees. That meant the rogue waves would come through about 30 degrees worse so that’s when you tended to get beam on to them.”

Glyn Charles was still at the helm when the decision was made to turn back. Also on deck were Darren Senogles and other crew. Because of the irregular and threatening shape of the waves it was agreed it would be fastest and safest to gybe the yacht – turn its stern through the wind – instead of tacking to the new course. It was a carefully planned manoeuvre, right down to having the engine running and engaged to ensure the yacht maintained momentum through the 180-degree turn. It worked brilliantly.

“We then got things tidy on deck before some of the
guys went below,” Senogles recalls. “At that stage we had the boom lashed to the deck on the port side of the cockpit because it was the leeward side of the boat when we were heading to Hobart. It was on the wrong side for the new course because it was to windward and it blocked the view of the waves coming at you. Glyn continued to steer while three of us manhandled the boom to the other side. Once that was done the other guys went downstairs while I lashed the boom to the deck. It was just Glyn and myself on deck. It was still daylight – probably around 3.30 in the afternoon. We started chatting. Glyn was a little disappointed with himself because he had been a bit seasick. He was saying – it was more like shouting so I could hear him over the noise of the wind and sea – how he felt he’d let the crew down. My reaction to that straight away was, ‘No, you haven’t mate. If you’re not well you can’t be doing your job properly, so why do it? Let someone do it who is well.’

“He accepted that and then we got talking about his wet weather gear. He had brand new gear and he was soaked. He said, ‘I don’t like where I am here in nature’s test lab…and worse still, this shit’s not working’. He wasn’t enjoying it at all. Fortunately it wasn’t cold but the waves were bloody big.”

Twenty minutes after announcing retirement and turning back towards Sydney, Neptune once again unleashed his fury upon
Sword of Orion
and its hapless crew.

“All I can remember was a big roar and then an incredible bang when it hit the side of the boat. It was like being slammed in a car accident,” recalls Senogles. “The boat began to roll. I remember being amazed at seeing the mast on the surface of the water, yet it was angled down below horizontal. We were way past 90 degrees. The yacht was on its side being slid down the
face of the wave with the deck getting pushed through the water. It seemed we were underwater yet still in mid-air. It was a weird sensation. I don’t know what was happening to Glyn at that stage. We crashed into the bottom of the wave and all hell broke loose. It just continued to roll the boat over. It didn’t happen fast but the force was unbelievable. I was pinned against the deck and really not able to move.”

The yacht was upside down for four or five seconds, during which time Senogles was tempted to unclip his safety harness, but a moment later and with an equally powerful force, the yacht righted itself. Had he managed to free himself he almost certainly would have drowned. He immediately began looking for Charles. Senogles’ first inclination that Charles was overboard came when he noticed the bright orange webbing strap of his safety harness which was still fastened to the yacht at one end, snaking over the side. His concern turned to sickening fear when he grabbed the strap, yanked it and it came straight to him, weightless, with nothing attached.

“I looked back in the water where I thought we’d just come from and there he was…about 30 metres away. I knew it was impossible to get anything to him because you couldn’t throw anything, life rings or ropes, upwind in those conditions. It would just blow back in your face.” Senogles then screamed at the top of his lungs, “Man overboard, man overboard!”

Below deck injuries had been sustained and the yacht itself was a wreck, mortally wounded with gaping holes in the deck. The mast was destroyed – it had wrapped itself around the boat, and the entire starboard side was damaged – every ring frame was broken. Distress flares were rushed to the cockpit. Some were fired. Kothe had been sitting strapped in at the nav station one second then crashing from the top of the boat right across to the
other side the next. He was covered in sails and was tangled in the restraining strap. Kulmar had been strapped into the upper forward bunk and was lucky to escape serious injury.

The crew instinctively split into two groups – some worked on the man overboard situation on deck while others assessed the extent of the damage. Senogles was at the stern calling out to Charles.

“I screamed at Glyn to swim. I know he heard me, but he did all of six strokes and that was it. I guess he didn’t realise at that stage that he was badly hurt, but when he moved his arms to swim you could see it on his face. I can only guess he had broken legs and ribs. He was in pain. After just a few strokes he realised that he couldn’t swim anymore.”

Senogles started shouting to those below for rope – a lifeline he could tie around himself and try and swim to Charles. There were only seconds available before another wave would surely wash
Sword of Orion
an insurmountable distance away. The man-overboard buoy had been deployed and a heaving line thrown into the water, but both actions were about as effective as blowing smoke into a fan. The wind was gusting at 80 knots and Charles was directly upwind. Everything was blowing back at the crew.

It was total chaos below deck. The only suitable length of line was the anchor warp. It needed to be unshackled from the anchor but the toolbox couldn’t be found. It had broken free from its stowage point during the roll-over and had disappeared. The search revealed another frightening problem. The base of the mast had been torn away from its step and was now angled into the toilet compartment – the head. As the waves continued to violently rock the yacht the mast was hinging at the deck. The bottom of the aluminium section was only
centimetres from being speared through the hull. It would only take one more bad wave.

On deck Senogles began to remove some of his clothing but then realised that it was far too time-consuming a process. He elected to swim wearing much of his heavy clothing and wet weather gear. “Just as I got some rope tied to me we had another huge wave come through. It was so big it surfed the boat probably 100 to 150 metres farther away from Glyn. Suddenly it was a hopeless task. I probably would never have got to him – but at that stage I was still thinking about it. Then someone grabbed me and stopped me from going.”

Steve Kulmar knew the yacht was moving away from Charles at a rapid pace and he also knew Senogles would have run out of rope before he reached Charles. In all probability there would have been two men overboard and drifting away from the yacht. Kulmar was overcome with grief. He was the one who had invited his friend, Glyn Charles, to join the crew, and he was now faced with the most horrific situation of his entire life.

“You could see him and then you couldn’t,” said Senogles. “He was just bobbing on the surface, trying to keep his head above the waves. Then he just went face down and disappeared. He seemed to be gone less than five minutes after we rolled. Even if I had been able to get him back to the yacht I dare say he probably would have struggled to survive what I believe were terrible injuries.”

The boom had been ripped away from its attachment on the deck, and had most probably taken Glyn Charles with it. The broken and buckled spokes in what had been a substantial aluminium steering wheel were further evidence of the force of the impact. The starboard side deck at the gunwale had opened up from the stern to the aft end of the cabin – almost half the length of the yacht.
Part of the deck and cabin top had caved in. The boat was cracked in half at deck level at the mast. The well housing the steering wheel had split open like a crevasse.

Below deck the structural damage was equally as extensive. The cockpit had been compressed six inches into the hull and the companionway hatch had imploded, allowing a considerable amount of water into the cabin. Senogles realised they needed to get some form of sea anchor out and keep the boat head to wind then cut the rig away before it did more damage to the hull. He appointed himself in charge of running the deck and clearing the mess while Carl Watson attended to the problems below. The EPIRB was sent up on deck, lashed into the cockpit and activated. While Senogles believed the yacht was relatively safe, water was still pouring in. It was highly unlikely that this fractured hulk, which only minutes earlier had been one of the sleekest and most sophisticated ocean racing yachts in Australia, could take much more.