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On Sister we have inflatable life jackets with webbing harnesses
and stainless steel rings built into them. We always wear the
jackets at night and, particularly when on watch alone, we attach
our selves to the boat with a tether clipped into the rings and
to corresponding rings or "jack" lines on the boat.
This is pretty common practice among cruisers. |
| Listening to the weather report one evening
I heard that a man overboard had been reported. Apparently the
skipper had gone overboard from a small Norwegian boat at 0400
in the morning. The report gave the coordinates of his last known
position and said that a search, including a US Coast Guard plane
and a number of ARC boats, had been organized. The position was
too far away for us to help so we didn't change course. |
| Prior to leaving, trying to convince our
crew of the importance of wearing life jackets and harnesses,
I told them that as far as I'm concerned to go overboard in the
middle of the ocean, particularly at night, is to die. Very, very
very few people are recovered alive after having gone overboard
at night or in rough weather. |
| I speculated that someone on the Norwegian
boat had come up to take his watch and discovered that the skipper
was gone. Who knows how long he had been gone? In my mind I wrote
the Norwegian skipper off ... he was a dead man. Damn! |
| We didn't hear anything the next day. It
was clear that I was right. On the second day we heard that the
skipper had been picked up by another Norwegian boat, one that
was participating in the ARC. Further, we heard that he had been
transferred back to his own boat and was en route once again to
St. Lucia. |
| In St. Lucia that skipper came aboard Sister
and told us what happened. He had not been on watch. Another crew
member was on watch but called below to get the skipper to come
up and help him change the sails. The skipper who had been sleeping
in his life jacket came up on deck. Before he had a chance to
"hook in" the boat jibed sending the boom crashing from
one side of the boat to the other. The boot caught the skipper
in the head and knocked him overboard. Get this now ... the crew
is awake and aware that the skipper had just gone overboard but
they couldn't find him. The seas weren't particularly rough.
It was dark. The crew knew immediately when he went in but they
still couldn't find him. The crew put out the call for help. |
| The Norwegian skipper determined that his
only chance for survival was to "intercept" one of the
ARC boats that surely were in the area. One, two, three times
or more he spotted on coming boats and plotted a course to swim
to intercept it. He said he got close enough one to see the expressions
on the faces of the crew. He yelled, he whistled with the emergency
whistle in his life jacket, but no one heard or saw him. |
| He did see the search aircraft but determined
that it was too high and/or too far away to have a chance of seeing
him. He kept trying his intercept strategy ... he decided that
it was his only hope. Seventeen hours after entering the water
one more desperate attempt to intercept a boat succeeded. The
boat that picked him up happened to be Norwegian as well. They
had been actively searching for the man overboard and, to some
extent, their search effort had been coordinated by the Coast
Guard airplane. The MOB, somewhat the worse for wear (exhaustion
and badly sunburned face) was returned to his boat and proceeded
to St. Lucia. When we met him in St. Lucia he was recovering from
the blisters that the sun had burned in his face and lips. |
| The final chapter to this story is eerie
and disturbing. The Norwegian boat that picked up the overboard
skipper had pulled another man from the water in the Canaries
just a few weeks before. The individual that they rescued in this
case had been a stowaway on a cargo ship leaving the Canaries.
On discovering the stowaway the ship's crew simply threw him in
the ocean. We don't know how long he had been in the water. He
survived by holding on to some flotsam until the sailboat rescued
him. Canarian medical authorities said he wouldn't have survived
another hour. Throwing a man in the water as this ship's crew
did is, at best, attempted murder as far as I'm concerned. Sadly,
I'm told that it is not all that uncommon. |
Follow these links to read about:
 | The Crossing main page |
| The Weather we had during the crossing |
| The Start of the Atlantic Rally for
Cruisers |
| Answers to questions people ask us |
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