Fatal Storm (31 page)

“That’s what they did, and at the same time they were watching all these gauges that were attached to it so they
could monitor the oxygen levels inside. Next thing, the guy is saying, ‘Oh, they can’t get it up and they’re running out of oxygen inside’. They could then see why we had to cut the hole in the bottom of the raft. Finally, when they got it to a position where it was about to come upright, the bloody righting line they were hauling on broke. I just looked at the guys and said somewhat sarcastically, ‘That’s bloody bad luck, isn’t it?’ then I looked at Gibbo and asked him, ‘How do you feel now?’ It was the first time since he had seen three mates die in the incident that he was convinced that we had done the right thing by putting the knife through the bottom of the raft to let some oxygen in. A lot of weight came off his shoulders that day, and everything I said about the liferaft was proven.”

Stanley still holds very strong memories of what he experienced during that race, right from when he first walked down the dock on Boxing Day morning and questioned a representative from the Bureau of Meteorology on the forecast. “I listened to him and after that said to myself, ‘Hang on, that can’t happen’, and sure enough the whole thing went the opposite way to what he told me.”

He said he still saw Gibson, Gould and Rynan on the odd occasion, but hadn’t seen Richard Winning for some years. “Richard left the sport from that moment and essentially went bush to his farm.”

At age 19 Michael “Beaver” Rynan was one of the youngest competitors to make his Hobart race debut in 1998. These days he still loves his sailing, but he can’t quite get himself to a position where he wants to exit Sydney Heads on a yacht and turn right – south towards Hobart.

This might partly be based on his belief that he’s used up three escape clauses in life – he’s already had three
near-death experiences. “There are plenty of reasons for me not wanting to do another Hobart,” he said. “A few years before the race I survived being hit by a truck, then after the
Winston Churchill
incident I almost lost my legs when I was hit by a car. That’s probably enough for me when it comes to being exposed to danger.”

It’s not that he hasn’t considered doing another Hobart, but each time he has, either his head or fate has intervened.

“In recent years I’ve been starting to itch to do it, saying to myself, ‘Yeah, yeah, this is the year. I’m going to do it’. But as the race gets closer I start to not look forward to it, so I find a reason not to go. It’s a case of, ‘Hang on; do I really want to jump on a boat and go to Hobart? No, I don’t. I could go and do this instead’.

“Even the year I signed on to do the race aboard the maxi
Nicorette
, fate took control. I’d really pumped myself up, saying, ‘Yes, this is it – I’m ready to go’, but then the yacht broke its mast a few days before the start and couldn’t compete. At least that stopped me making the decision about whether or not I’d go.”

In hindsight Rynan wishes he had had counselling after the trauma that came with the sinking of
Winston Churchill
and the loss of three crewmates.

“I went through a period of depression when I got home. I don’t know if that was because of what I’d been through, but counselling at the time probably would have helped.

“There’s no denying that the memories are still there – it still plays on my mind. Even when I go offshore to go fishing, I find myself just staring out at the horizon while my mind drifts back to what happened.

“Occasionally I have a dream about it, and when I wake up in the morning I’m thinking, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?’ It happens more often after I’ve been
sailing on a rough day, and not necessarily offshore.

“No particular part of what happened in 1998 haunts me; just lots of different things spring back into my mind – things that I wouldn’t have thought about for a while. I can picture each situation very clearly, but there’s no real reason why it has come into my head.

“With it being my first Hobart I didn’t really know what to expect, so when I woke that first morning and saw those huge seas I just assumed it was normal for the race. I was sitting up the back of the yacht just behind the nav station with a little disposable camera taking a few photos of the troughs and not really concerned. But when the waves started to crash over us, I began to think, ‘This is pretty bad’.

“So, you can imagine what was going through my head when all the drama hit us and soon after that I’m being told to leap into the liferaft. I just thought, ‘Well, where do we go from here?’ There were a thousand scenarios racing through my mind.”

Most of the sailing Rynan has enjoyed since 1998 has been at regattas, like Hamilton Island Race Week in the tropical Whitsundays. He said that should the day come where he does decide to challenge himself and race to Hobart once more, there will be just one rule relating to the yacht he will be aboard: “It will be a bloody big one.”

Footnote:
Sadly, in September 2008, just weeks after this interview, Michael Rynan passed away, aged 29.

M
any people have struggled to comprehend how the 54th Sydney to Hobart race could start so innocently then within 36 hours metamorphose into one of the world’s worst ocean racing disasters. By the time the cyclone had cut its catastrophic swathe across the north-east corner of Bass Strait, viewers from Tasmania to Greenland were witnessing a horror story unfold. Graphic television pictures, newspaper photographs and interviews with survivors presented the perils of ocean yacht racing as it had never been seen before.

While all this was happening the massive rescue effort was continuing in earnest and the race – much to the surprise of those who did not understand the dynamics of the sport – went on. There were calls from some uninformed sections of the media to stop the race. It appeared that few, if any, behind those suggestions took time to consider what was really happening. Perhaps they thought it was akin to motorsport where if it rained too hard and the track became slippery, flags could be waved and the cars pulled into the pits. In reality, even if the race had been stopped, there were many yachts still 50 to 100 miles from safety – they would have had to have battled life-threatening seas and wild winds for a day or
more to return to port. For some, friendlier skies lay ahead, not astern.

The diligent staff at AMSA’s Rescue Control Centre in Canberra were running on coffee and adrenalin. The second day of operation became a blur. The usual overnight workforce of five had soon quadrupled to 20 and as each staff member arrived they were briefed and deployed to fill another gap in the rescue coordination. Some would not leave their post for the next 14 to 16 hours. In a “normal” environment the RCC would not be dealing with more than two incidents at a time. Here they saw up to 17.

The AMSA public relations service was also under severe pressure as calls from families and friends of competitors plus countless media inquiries from all over the world flooded in. David Gray, Brian Hill and Robin Poke handled some 300 calls each in the space of 48 hours. They did live television crosses across Australia and into America and even did interviews to remote parts of Europe. Uncertainty and confusion were their worst enemies – most of the yachts had lost their communication capabilities and locating them was exceedingly difficult at times. Often the RCC would be relying solely on analogue mobile phones on board aircraft.

Assistant Operations Manager, Steve Francis, had difficulties in assessing and keeping up with the dynamics of the operation. At one stage the RCC was dealing with five beacon alerts simultaneously! When a helicopter was sent out with a homing capability, its on-board system was instantly overloaded, unable to cope with the volume of alerts. The search and rescue effort covered some 10,000 square miles and involved five civilian helicopters, 38 twin-engine
fixed-wing aircraft, two Royal Australian Navy Sea King and two Sea Hawk helicopters plus HMAS
Newcastle
; and from the Royal Australian Air Force two PC–3 long-range Orion and two C130 Hercules aircraft.

While the weather continued to improve on the second day of the operation, it was not without incident. At one stage helicopters and aircraft were alerted that they may be rescuing one of their own – the NRMA. CareFlight chopper piloted by Terry Sommers had suffered an engine malfunction 80 miles offshore. Sommers advised the top cover SAR aircraft that they had a problem and were returning to the coast. Assistance was immediately arranged and they made it safely and securely back.

With CYC commodore Hugo van Kretschmar competing in the race aboard the yacht
Assassin
, former commodore Peter Bush had been nominated as the club’s official spokesman. Bush was a veteran of 14 Sydney to Hobart races and was in regular contact from his Sydney home with club officials, monitoring the progress of the race the first night out. He suspected the fleet was going to cop some bad weather. He took a nap then headed to the club at 2.30am so he could monitor the 03:00 sked. Bush finally left the club more than 40 hours later. At around 12.30 on the afternoon of the 27th he heard
Rager
on the single side band radio in the sailing office report that they were in extreme winds of 70-odd knots. The club was soon inundated with phone calls from relatives and friends of competitors. Droves of media also began arriving, all determined to get a more powerful story than their opposition. Bush was feeling the heat so he arranged to stage a media briefing every two hours to pass on updates. The world, as well as Australia, hungered for news.

Around noon on the 28th
Assassin
returned to Sydney, having retired from the race. Bush had briefed van Kretschmar of developments by mobile phone while he was still at sea so he’d be somewhat prepared for the media firing squad awaiting him dockside. Van Kretschmar soon realised he should go to Hobart to take control of proceedings on behalf of the club. The media followed, always seeking answers. He held press conferences to update the media on each drama. He also found himself having to defend the sport and the CYC.

By midnight on the 27th of December, 39 yachts had already retired with most heading into Eden. Seriously damaged boats, some with just the twisted remnants of what was originally a tall and proud spar, made a sad sight. At times ambulances seemed to be running a shuttle service to take away the injured. More yachts continued to wend their way into port that night while others which had avoided or miraculously managed not to be claimed by the most explosive forces of the cyclone, raced on towards Hobart.

The two fastest yachts,
Sayonara
and
Brindabella
, managed to avoid much of the storm’s fury, but they still had their share of frightening moments. Amidst the terror and tragedy there were moments of humour.

“Our mastman, Paddy Broughton, was wearing a hydrostatic life jacket – one which automatically inflates after a few seconds of being totally immersed in water,” recalls
Brindabella
crewman Andrew Jackson. “Because there was so much water going over the boat he decided the best thing he could do – to keep the water away from the automatic inflation device – was to put it on under his wet weather jacket and harness. At one stage when we were in Bass Strait, Paddy went up to the bow to haul in
the No. 5 jib. The next thing the boat stuck its bow through this dirty big wave and the jib started being washed over the side. The wave was so big Paddy was underwater.

“When the water cleared Paddy was still there, flat on his back over the spinnaker pole on the foredeck and restrained by his harness. Next thing he started grabbing at his chest in apparent pain then before we knew it he had pulled out his knife and started stabbing himself in the chest – or at least it appeared that way to us. What had happened was that so much water had got inside his wet weather gear it had activated the life jacket inflation device. His safety harness wouldn’t let the jacket expand, so his chest was being crushed. He had grabbed his knife to stab the jacket so it would deflate.”

Due to radio problems the
Brindabella
crew weren’t fully versed on the devastation behind them. The
Sayonara
crew had a fair idea, but they were still battling to cope with their own predicament. Larry Ellison and his 22 crewmembers ran into unexpected difficulties when they reached the north-eastern corner of Tasmania. There was a huge high-pressure system filling in against the low and the seas had yet again turned mountainous. With little warning they lost their secondary forestay, stanchions were being ripped free – the boat was coming apart piece by piece. Crewmembers were flung about like rag dolls and then had to deal with injuries on top of fatigue. Crewmember Phil Kieley was hurled through the air at one stage and snared his ankle as he went. “When I landed and looked down I thought my seaboot had come off because it was hanging out sideways from under the leg of my wet weather trousers. Then I realised my foot was still in it. There was so much happening around me right there and then it took a moment to realise my ankle was broken.”
Sayonara
eventually tacked in towards the
Tasmanian coast, hitting the waves at a better angle and skilfully managing to stave off complete disaster.

The crew of
Foxtel-Titan Ford
were more than 60 miles offshore when they were forced to go under bare poles for more than five hours. To head for shelter on the mainland may have been more dangerous than to continue across Bass Strait. The crew were painfully aware the boat was untried since having the bottom rebuilt and the keel replaced. Their insurance came in the form of boatbuilder and crewmember Andrew Miller who, at the height of the storm, kept pulling up floorboards “to inspect the workmanship”. Co-owner Peter Sorensen could have sworn he was scaling snow-capped mountains, not waves.

In the middle of the furore another of the owners, radio show host Stan Zemanek, was doing live radio reports despite being confined to his bunk with broken ribs and other injuries. Even though he had been sailing for 42 years he was a Hobart race debutante, and he vowed to his listeners that he would not be going a second time.

“We had a skeleton crew up on deck and all the time those of us below could hear them shouting ‘IN-COMING, IN-COMING!’ as though we were in Vietnam,” Zemanek recalls. “We could only sit down below in this confined space and listen to the yacht being pounded. There was certainly a time where I thought, this is it, it’s all over, and we’re going to die. I started to think about my wife and my kids and all the family, thinking all the time that maybe I would never see them again. I’m not too proud to say I was praying and I’m sure everybody else on the boat was doing exactly the same thing. When you’re sitting out there just helpless,
like you’re a cork in a bathtub, you have to rely on that spiritual belief. We all tend to believe we’re big rough and tough sailors who can handle anything, but in the true scheme of things, when push comes to shove, when you’re faced with the realities of life and you know this could be your last moment on earth, you start to think of family, and friends, and God. You also tell yourself you’d better start making amends.”

For the third owner, and
Foxtel-Titan Ford
’s navigator, Julie Hodder, the fear of flying off waves was tempered by the reality of what had happening to other members of the fleet and by an especially eerie experience. She vividly recalls sailing through the eye of the storm, going from 70 to 80 knot wind to zero in a matter of minutes. Unsure of what to do, they waited for a few minutes then put up the mainsail with one reef in it, then shyly set the storm jib. Twenty minutes later the “eye” blinked and the storm slammed them again – but this time it was only 40 to 50 knots. Hodder was in charge of the radio and the infirmary below and was dishing out seasickness tablets, bandages and whatever else was required by the three injured crewmembers. She was also bailing furiously, second only to Tony Poole, and was on the radio, relaying information to Telstra Control on board
Young Endeavour.

She and the other crewmembers were concerned about
Winston Churchill
’s position and condition. They knew almost everyone on board. Ian Kiernan and the crew aboard
Canon Maris
were also distressed as they made their way back up the coast towards Sydney. Every possible radio frequency was being monitored in the desperate hope that crewman Jonathan Gibson’s father, John, who was aboard
Winston Churchill
, had been found. When the news came through John was alive young “Gibbo” grabbed the whisky bottle from the shelf and sculled about a quarter of the contents in one hit.

Hobart was a city in mourning when the world’s greatest maxi yacht,
Sayonara
, sliced its way up the Derwent River at around 8am on December 29. For 53 years the great race had brought national and international focus on this capital of Australia’s island state, but this year it was an attention burdened with sorrow. It was supposedly the height of summer, but on this morning there was a distinct chill in the air as the white-hulled sloop broke through the finish line off Battery Point, immediately adjacent to the city’s waterfront. And while the usual fleet of small craft was on hand to escort the first yacht into port, the elation that most often accompanied the moment was non-existent. The massive official welcome that had been planned – including daytime fireworks and a trophy presentation – had been cancelled as a mark of respect for those who had lost their lives. Aboard
Sayonara
, some of the world’s most seasoned and professional sailors were shaking their heads in disbelief. Some just slumped to the deck.

Around 5000 people were crammed along the wharves to watch the first of the surviving yachts arrive. The
Sayonara
crew struggled to recognise the welcoming crowd inasmuch as the crowd seemed undecided whether or not it was right to celebrate
Sayonara
’s arrival. As the yacht docked alongside the pontoon specially prepared for the welcome, Ellison stepped ashore and was greeted by the waiting media throng. Immediately above him, colourful flags hung at half-mast. Ellison, his eyes reddened by tears and salt spray, spoke about his experiences.

“Never again. Not if I live to be 1000 years old will I do a Hobart race. This is not what it’s supposed to be about. Difficult yes, dangerous no, life threatening – definitely not.” After suggesting he might quit the sport
he said there was only one word to describe the race – “nightmare”. “It was by far the toughest race I’ve ever done in my life. It was horrible. The crew work was inspirational. Very bad things could have happened to us out there and these guys got us through. Guys were knocked down but they just kept getting back up and getting back to work. They kept doing what had to be done to keep the boat in one piece – and keep all of us alive. It was truly extraordinary. Anyone who signs up for this race expects a difficult race but no one expects a dangerous race. The seas were enormous and the wind made sounds I’ve never heard before.”

World champion yachtsman Chris Dickson sat on the edge of the yacht, staring into space and listening to what Ellison was saying. His wife of one week, Sue, comforted him. “That’s as tough as it gets,” said Dickson. “Being here first sure is nice but being here at all is the big thing. Every member of the crew is thinking about those who are still out there and not thinking too much about how we have done.”