Ten Degrees of Reckoning (21 page)

The popularity of offshore cruising and passage-making increased with the advent of GPS. Since then, many more technological systems have been made available for recreational vessels. Although some modern devices are hard to resist, not all are essential, and some actually get in the way of developing safe practices and good seamanship skills. Some get in the way of enjoying and becoming part of the natural elements and the experiences of sailing. In difficult situations, common sense and experience can count for a lot more than complex automated systems. I imagine even Captain Cook would not have been foolish enough to turn down GPS as he explored the world, but not without his trusty sextant. Offshore sailors need to have some knowledge of navigation techniques without power requirements in the case of a breakdown or an electronic malfunction. Sailors also need to understand that equipment such as a collision avoidance radar detector and radar guard alarms are dependent upon the functionality of other vessels’ equipment. Certainly there have been many reports and anecdotes about radar units on ships deliberately turned off, and not just on substandard vessels, although the reasons are unclear.

The Korean CMAIA report said the second mate had sufficient time to avoid the
Melinda Lee
when he first spotted their red light, but failed to take action until it was too late. The
Pan Grace
not only contributed to the “direct cause of the accident, but also shut down any chance to rescue the victims.”

Shut down any chance to rescue the victims.
That, perhaps, is the official term for nautical hit-and-run. Ben’s death might have been attributed to inexperience or negligence. But whatever had gone wrong was egregiously compounded with the next measures taken and not taken. South Korea is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; it is an agreement that provides for rescue and assistance to save a life, as long as the ship itself is not put in harm’s way. Certainly there was no risk to the
Pan Grace.
There was speculation that Judy was mistaken in her assertions that the ship returned. It was proposed that the ship was in some kind of a skid in its attempt to get back on course. Possibly. But why had they altered course? There were conjectures that even if they were looking out the windows, it was impossible for them to actually see the two adults and one tiny girl. It would have been impossible to see the family because the crew didn’t use any searchlights or any other means to look for them.

I have no doubt that the Sleavins saw the crew in the dim accommodation lights. I talked to Judy before any vessel was implicated. When I told her about the Russian ship that everyone was waiting for in Australia, Judy disagreed.

“Russian? No, I don’t think so. All the men had short, dark hair, and they looked Asian,” she said.

I was aghast. “They were close enough that you could see them that well?”

The readouts of the course recorder on the
Pan Grace
could have ended the dispute about the ship’s movement after the collision. The course recorder on a ship is the marine equivalent of the airplane’s black box. The ship’s course is transmitted from the vessel’s gyrocompass to the course recorder, thus providing accurate information about the course and any changes in rudder angle. The crew reported that there had been a seventeen-hour paper jam in the ship’s course recorder, coincidentally beginning approximately three hours before the collision.

The New Zealand MSA sent a letter to the South Korean CMAIA:

We would appreciate hearing from you on what steps you have been able to take in order to check as to the cause of the course recorder’s failure. Should you need any assistance on this matter, we can recommend an expert in the United Kingdom who has conducted numerous interpolations of course recorder traces following a collision. For instance, he has been able to determine, by reference of the original trace, whether the failure of the course recorder was accidental or a deliberate act. Please let us know if you wish to receive further information about this expert.

The South Korean investigators never requested the help of the course recorder expert, but later, under oath during the depositions, some of the crew admitted to knowing of an alteration of the course recorder pens, producing a discrepancy of 10 to 12 degrees between the course recorder reading before the collision and the deck log entries of the heading of the
Pan Grace
according to the gyrocompass. It was implied in the crews’ depositions that Captain Kim himself had manipulated the readings.

Captain Kim, even under oath, claimed to know nothing about events of November 24 until he was contacted by fax on December 5 by the Pan Ocean Shipping Company. However, the day after the collision, he scheduled emergency steering drills. Two days later, he made a log entry with night orders to all crew to look out for vessels bound for New Zealand and “do give-way action in advance.” There was a subsequent night order prohibiting Second Mate Han from being on watch alone in inclement weather. Captain Kim had failed to make any entry in the master’s night order log until after the collision.

The chief investigator in South Korea told a newspaper reporter that he had long been convinced the
Pan Grace
was involved. He waited to forward the case for prosecution, he said, until the Korean National Institute for Scientific Investigation completed chemical tests on the antifouling paint that confirmed the positive match.

South Korean Maritime Police formally booked Second Mate Han, as duty officer, on charges of accidental homicide and requested that the South Korean prosecutor’s office indict him. The completed files were forwarded to the prosecutor’s office on April 1, 1996.

Pan Ocean was intractably opposed to any outside directives, and a spokesman for the shipping company issued a statement that said the South Korean Maritime Police had no authority over them. Several days later, all criminal charges were dismissed by the prosecutor’s office.

The Korean Maritime Board held a hearing, and the second mate had his license suspended for three months. The master was given an admonition. Pan Ocean Shipping Company changed the name
Pan Grace
to
Pan Leader
and sent the ship back out to sea for its next load of cargo.

Nineteen

Aotearoa

JUDY SAVED HERSELF THROUGH SHEER GUTS AND IN conceivable mental resolve, and then New Zealand saved her again, in so many ways. There was the excellent care she received at a modern hospital with a compassionate director and a professional staff. The diligence and perseverance of the New Zealand Maritime Safety Authority. The kindness and generosity of new friends. The empathy and support of strangers. The astonishing physical beauty of the country. The general goodwill. The twist on the English language, with vowels stretched well beyond their capacity. The idioms. The spirituality. The infusion of Maori culture. The land of the long white cloud.

The slower-paced, holistic sense of life gave Judy some context for her grief. Even early on in the hospital, she came to realize that here she would not have to isolate herself or suppress her anguish. The first time a nurse came to wheel her outside for some fresh air, Judy was anxious.

“I don’t think I’m ready to go outside,” she said. “What if I start crying?”

“I’ll cry with you,” the nurse replied.

“The whole of New Zealand is like a small town in mourning,” wrote a local newspaper columnist. Through a representative, Judy sent out her heartfelt thanks, and after her message was read on television, there was a new outpouring of sentiment. One letter said:

Paul Holmes read your message to all New Zealand on TV, and I just can’t stop thinking of you. Know that the country’s thoughts and prayers are with you; you show a tremendous courage and sound so, so brave.

The
New Zealand Herald,
the country’s largest newspaper, reported on Thursday, November 30, 1995:

Yesterday, a kaumatua [elder], Mr. Walter Mountain from Rawhiti, near the spot where Mrs. Sleavin was washed ashore at Deep Water Cove, announced a rahui as a mark of respect for those lost. The rahui places a tapu [taboo] on the taking of all fish and shellfish from an area on the seaward side of the line between Tikitiki (Ninepin Island) and Rakaumangamanga (Cape Brett) for the next fourteen days. Meanwhile, marine investigators continued the inquiry.
 

The Polynesians were unparalleled seafarers. Hundreds of years before European oceanic exploration began, they sailed across vast uncharted seas in their voyaging canoes. They guided these canoes, made of tree trunks and coconut fibers, over great distances using the stars, the sun, the shape of the clouds, the wind, and the direction of the currents and swells to steer their course. Their discovery and settlement is represented by the Polynesian Triangle, with Hawaii at its Northern Hemisphere apex, and Easter Island and New Zealand forming the east and southwest corners of the base in the Southern Hemisphere. Islands within this triangle are hundreds, and often thousands, of miles apart. The Polynesian Maori settled Aotearoa (New Zealand) around the year 1000, or possibly earlier.

Europeans first saw Aotearoa in the seventeenth century. In 1642, Abel Tasman, the Dutch East India Company explorer, sighted the gorgeous coastline of the South Island but was discouraged from landing by the Maori. Afterward, the Dutch named the area after one of their own provinces, Zeeland. A century later the British and French took some interest, and Captain Cook, the great English navigator, arrived in 1769. By that time, Whangarei, Judy’s first home, was a thriving Maori settlement. The first European settler, William Carruth, arrived in that district in 1839.

The early city was a trading post, but what really increased the population and prosperity of the Whangarei District was the kauri timber and its gum. The magnificent trees, unique to New Zealand, were used internationally in the shipbuilding industry and for residential homes, and the gum was prized as a varnish. Maori had used the soot from burning the gum as a pigment for the dark colors of their illustrious tattoos; it also made a good fuel for cooking and, when lit, a good torch. There are still several Gumdiggers Cafés in the Northland, named as a tribute to those who worked so hard with spears and spades to excavate the gum until there was no more. Then came coal mining, wheat and dairy farming, shipbuilding, and brick making. For years, the town’s progress was impeded by limited access, but the North Island Main Trunk Line from Auckland to the Bay of Islands was completed in 1923. With the first all-weather road to Auckland developed in 1934, new industries could establish themselves. The hospital to which Judy was taken stands on its original 1898 site.

New Zealand comprises two large main islands, North and South Islands, and several outlying islands. It is similar in size to the state of Colorado and lies at latitudes south of the equator similar to California’s position north of the equator. January and February are the warmest months; July is the coldest. Unlike its closest neighbor, Australia, which is nearly bisected by the Tropic of Capricorn, New Zealand has warm subtropical areas in the north and cool temperate climates in the far south. It is home to beaches and lush pastoral land, fjords, rainforests, and glaciers.

When Judy arrived, at the end of 1995, New Zealanders were fond of citing the fact that the total population consisted of 3 million people and 70 million sheep. The more accurate count was 3.5 million people. Compare that with Japan, a country not much larger, with a population of 125.5 million at the time. Perhaps the slight population gives New Zealanders the good sense to make connections with others. They deserve their international reputation for hospitality and friendliness. Most stores close every day at five or six P.M., and from noon on Saturday until Monday morning. While New Zealanders are industrious, they manage to make time to spend with family, play with their children, read, and engage in sports and recreation. To see someone rushing down the street with a takeaway cup of coffee is still unusual today. They would rather gather with friends in their cozy cafés for a small break.

The first item Babe bought for Judy was a Bodum French press coffeemaker, to encourage her to invite people to the little cottage at Tutukaka. Before Judy returned on the first anniversary of the collision, Babe and Ian carpeted and painted the cottage, and put up a little canopy to make it even more hospitable. They also readied her car, to give her the opportunity to go visiting in Whangarei. Judy was to benefit from the sensibilities of New Zealand in so many ways.

While Judy was still in the hospital recuperating—before she knew any New Zealanders, before she knew the impact the country would have on her healing—she asked Isabelle, her social worker and sometime confidante, to sneak her out the back stairwell for a little distraction. Isabelle told Judy that unfortunately she was unavailable; she was meeting some friends for a regularly scheduled Pizza Night.

“Can I come with you?” Judy remembers asking. “I haven’t had pizza for three years.”

“Well, this is a support group of sorts,” Isabelle replied.

She explained to Judy that she met informally every month with Jigs Bradley, her supervisor, and Val Boag, the clinical leader for relationship services, to talk about their difficult cases.

“I’m a difficult case. Can I come?” Judy replied.

Isabelle did ask the other two, and Val Boag recalls that she was the most reluctant. She had not met Judy, but looking back, Val said, “I probably snorted, ‘Typical American, so up-front, just wants pizza! She can come once.’”

Judy arrived with Isabelle, but tired easily and didn’t say much, so they were all surprised when she wanted to know the date of the next Pizza Night.

By the time the next Pizza Night came around, Judy was living in Tutukaka, and with Babe’s help, she hosted it. The five women laughed together and wept together and ate their pizza with lumps in their throats. Since the group had already evolved into something more than a clinical health care support gathering, Babe asked if she could include her friend Judy Dempster at the next Pizza Night. The original three realized that by bringing Judy Sleavin in, they had lost control of the group’s original impetus. They also realized that something more significant was happening. Judy Dempster offered to change her name to Jemma, so that no one would be confused, and they all changed their names. They called themselves the Wild Girls.