Suddenly Overboard

by Tom Lochhaas

  San Diego Bay, California, July 2012. The owner of a 36-foot sailboat was taking two guests out for an afternoon sail on the bay. One of the jibsheets got hung up on a foredeck cleat, and the owner turned the wheel over to one of the guests and went forward to clear it. As the boat bounced on a wave he lost his balance and fell overboard, not wearing a life jacket. The two guests had no sailing experience and had no idea of how to turn the boat back to reach him, but they were able to radio for help. Later, harbor police recovered his body.

  CHAPTER 12

  What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

  The stories in previous chapters have illustrated the many things that can go wrong when sailing, often with disastrous results. A key issue in those stories, as in almost all sailing and boating disasters, is that the people involved were not expecting trouble. What could possibly go wrong on a fine day like any other? But in virtually all cases, lives could have been saved if only the sailors had really thought about that question. Lots of things can go wrong, and regularly do. What happens next may depend on luck, as the rescues in some of these stories demonstrate, or on preparations made or actions taken in advance. When you do ask and honestly answer the question of what can possibly go wrong, you’re much more likely to live to tell the tale. Accidents still happen, but when they do, as we see in the following four brief narratives, the sailors who prepare for them, who frequently think in “what if” terms, are sailors who live to sail again.

  Capsize in Puget Sound

  Blake didn’t consider himself a very experienced sailor. He’d learned to sail only a year ago after moving to the Tala Point area north of Seattle. He first sailed with a man he worked with who sailed a Catalina 30 on the sound. Blake loved it immediately: the wind and water, the beauty of the islands, the sheer joy of the boat cutting a line through waves, the music of water along the hull—the whole experience.

  Unfortunately, his friend insisted on doing everything himself, so Blake didn’t feel he learned much. Rather than wait to be invited out again on the boat, he signed up for sailing lessons at a nearby yacht club. They told him that at age 40 he’d be mostly in with kids and teenagers, but he didn’t mind. He just wanted to sail.

  The sailing class used 14-foot Hunter daysailers, two crew to a boat, with an open deck and long cockpit, but they felt like “real” sailboats with a jib, a mainsail, and sail controls, including a vang and leech tension lines. He learned how to position his weight, use the centerboard to advantage, and avoid overtrimming the sails. He learned a lot and loved it all.

  And now he had his own sailboat, a chubby 15-footer with a tiny cuddy cabin, beamier and heavier and slower than the club boats, a little old and a little beat up—and it was great. He had bought it in the fall and found it hard to wait for spring. Through the winter he read sailing books and magazines and made frequent visits to his local chandlery, marveling at all the boat gear. Marveling too at what it cost to own a boat! But he was determined to do it right, and he chose his gear after researching options online. He hadn’t much liked the life jackets at the sailing school, so he bought an inflatable PFD that felt good and had a built-in harness. He bought new docklines because the old ones were frayed. He inspected the rigging closely for any weak points. He discovered the flares on the boat had expired and bought new ones. All the while he was imagining himself out in the sound, sailing his own boat among the San Juan Islands, camping aboard, exploring hidden coves. He was reading classic sailing narratives too, which taught him about things that sometimes happened out there. He bought a tether for his harness. He bought a submersible handheld VHF.

  Friends visiting his small apartment surveyed the heap of gear and joked he was getting obsessed.

  Then, finally, spring arrived, and with it, sailing! It was all as good as he’d imagined it.

  On his fourth weekend he made a small mistake while out sailing alone, turning without first releasing the mainsheet from the jam cleat, and a gust knocked over the boat. The rail went under, the cockpit filled, the mast went down, and the boat kept rolling.

  Blake jumped and was clear when the boat turned turtle, his PFD inflating with a bang and its bladder filling around his neck as it ripped open the Velcro cover. He floated easily, staring at his upside-down boat, imagining his precious gear tumbling out to the bottom below.

  There was nothing he could hold on to except the rudder, and he saw immediately that the heavy centerboard had fallen back into its trunk. He pulled himself as high on the hull as he could, but no part of the board emerged from the hull, and he assumed there was no way he could get the board extended again to try to right the boat, as he’d learned in the smaller sailboats at the club. He was screwed. And the water was cold.

  He pulled himself up again and looked all around, but there were no boats close enough to see him. So he held on to the rudder with one hand while with the other he reached down and unclipped the VHF radio from his belt. Thank god he’d bought one that was submersible.

  He switched it on, was thrilled to see the screen light up, and called the Coast Guard on channel 16. They answered immediately. He felt sheepish as he explained what had happened, but they took his information and said help would be on the way and to keep the radio on.

  He was surprised by how quickly the helicopter arrived. It hovered overhead, and the crew called him on the radio to see how he was doing. He said he was cold but okay and was not having any problem holding on to the boat.

  The helicopter remained nearby until a Coast Guard cutter appeared not long after. They had him on board in a minute, and then one of their crew in a wet suit went into the water with a line and attached it to the sailboat so that they could pull the boat over and back upright.

  While they worked with his boat, Blake kept apologizing for causing all this trouble, but the crew assured him that’s what they were there for. They asked if he wanted them to tow the boat back, but everything looked fine when they’d pumped it out and checked the rigging.

  “Can I sail it back?” he asked.

  “Sure,” a guardsman said. “That’s what you came out for, right, the sailing?”

  He had removed the uncomfortably inflated PFD and switched to his spare life jacket, and now made a final check of his gear and the sails.

  “Just keep that life jacket on, right?” called one of the crew. Too often they’d had to do recoveries when boaters didn’t.

  Capsize in Lake Huron

  When Jackson planned his move to Michigan from North Carolina, he looked for an affordable place to live as close as possible to Lake Huron. Over the last couple of summers he’d sailed his Hobie catamaran as often as he could, and he planned to keep on sailing on the Great Lakes. He and his wife towed the boat all the way behind his pickup.

  Both the air and water were cooler on Lake Huron than Pamlico Sound, but otherwise it felt just as good to be out on the water, flying hull when the wind was good. Soon he had his new Michigan friends joining him on the weekends when the weather was good. His wife enjoyed other pursuits but seldom complained about how he spent his Saturdays.

  On this Saturday afternoon, two of his friends had come along and they’d had a blast. The wind was good and his crew, who had sailed with him before, knew what to do. Even better, it was a warm day for early October with good wind. His only regret was that the others had to leave by four o’clock, so he sailed them both back to the beach. The day was so perfect for sailing, though, that he couldn’t just stop so early. So he let them off and headed back out into the lake for another hour or two of sailing, as if he could bank the experience for the coming winter.

  He shot off straight out into the lake to where the wind was stronger and steadier. A couple of miles out, the wind was perfect and he turned slightly, onto a beam reach. The windward hull rose high from the water, and he felt the thrill of riding the fine line of control, hiked out on the high hull, the boat like a nimble extension of his own body.

  Until he relaxed just a little too much and responded
too slowly to a gust and the cat went over.

  The cold water was shocking—this was the first time he’d flipped since North Carolina—but he floated well in his life jacket and wasn’t worried. He’d righted the cat several times back in North Carolina, and the waves weren’t high enough to be troublesome, so he wasn’t worried.

  Then he realized the mast had gone much deeper in the water and the position of the hulls was different than in the past. He stared at the boat, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The angle of the hulls suggested the mast was some 45 degrees into the water. That made no sense. He’d made his own masthead float, and it had always had enough buoyancy to keep the masthead at or near the surface. At that angle it was easy to stand on the lower hull, grab the line tied to the other hull, and lean back to pull the boat back upright. But now with the mast far underwater, the hulls were positioned differently. He climbed up on the bottom hull and reached forward to the upper hull, but it was too far over and the lifting line was too short to let him pull back with enough force to pivot the boat back up.

  He tried over and over, but he simply had no leverage. What had happened?

  Then he remembered something from his college physics class: salt water is denser than fresh water and provides more buoyancy. The masthead float that had worked in North Carolina didn’t work as well here; it was just too small for the lesser buoyancy of fresh water.

  He looked around but saw no boats nearby. It was after five o’clock now, and the few distant boats were headed back toward marinas. Dark came early in October. Already the air was cooling, and he shivered in his wet T-shirt and shorts.

  Surely, he thought, someone will see me standing on the capsized hull. But as the sun sank, no boat had come close enough.

  There was nothing to do but wait. He hoped his wife remembered that he’d said he would be home by six, and would call someone for help.

  But once it was full dark, he started thinking the odds were slim they’d find him even if they came looking. It’s a huge lake, and he could’ve been anywhere. He tried to remember the forecast and how cold it would get. Carefully balancing on the hull, he stripped off his T-shirt and tried to wring it dry, but he was shivering now with or without the shirt. That worried him; he’d heard about hypothermia and how you eventually lost muscle control. If he fell back into the cold water, he didn’t think he’d last long, maybe not until daylight.

  He watched the lights on the distant shore, the running lights of occasional faraway boats, the tiny light of a passing jet overhead. He couldn’t stop shivering, and sometimes his arms shook hard. He was trying to think what to do, but thinking was arduous. He’d been standing for hours, sometimes balanced, sometimes leaning forward uncomfortably to hold the other hull, and all he wanted was to sit, but he worried about having his legs in the cold water.

  Then he saw another airplane, lower this time, between him and the shore, moving slowly left to right. Then it moved farther away. Suddenly there was a burst of light below it, a bright blast of light below the plane, which drifted slowly down and went out as it reached the water.

  The plane turned and went back, right to left, closer now. It turned again a couple of minutes later. Then there was another blast of light, and he realized it was dropping flares. This one was close enough to shine white on his skin, and he began waving his arms.

  After a moment the plane turned, banking, flew directly overhead, and dropped another flare. He was shouting now, waving frantically.

  The plane went on and banked into a slow turn back. Had they seen him?

  Then he heard a boat engine that gradually grew louder, and at last he saw paired red and green lights becoming larger as the boat approached.

  The rescue boat crew found him with their spotlight and within a couple minutes had eased up to the capsized catamaran and helped him aboard. His wife had called 911 at 6:15, he learned, and they’d been searching with boats closer to shore for hours, doubting he’d be out so far. Then they’d called in the Hercules search-and-rescue plane. “Good thing your wife called fast,” they told him. “There’s a lot of water out here.”

  Sinking in the Georgia Strait

  Sampson was tired. He’d planned to be back at the marina in Vancouver, British Columbia, by midnight, but here it was already after 1 A.M. and he was still a few miles north of Entrance Island, miles offshore in the middle of the Georgia Strait. The wind had all but died at sunset, and he wasn’t sure he had enough diesel left after days of cruising to make it all the way in under power. So he jogged along slowly in the 8-knot breeze.

  Not that he was in any real hurry. He was just sleepy. He’d turned off the autopilot to steer his 36-foot sloop by hand, which helped him stay alert. But time had just crawled by while the boat made barely 2 knots.

  He caught himself yawning again and thought he’d better have a cup of coffee. He stood in the cockpit and checked all around for any ships, then reset the autopilot, unclipped his tether from the U-bolt when he approached the companionway, and went down the steps.

  And found himself standing in 20 centimeters of water.

  Instantly he was wide awake. He flipped on several cabin lights and grabbed a flashlight. It had to be a through-hull fitting, he reasoned, he hadn’t been going fast enough to punch a hole in the hull if he’d hit anything. A hose might have come off or burst, or perhaps a seacock had broken. He had wooden plugs wired by each of the through-hulls, and he quickly grabbed the mallet from where it hung near the engine compartment door. Just find the one leaking, he thought. He knew what to do.

  He started with the engine compartment, which opened behind the companionway steps. There was the cooling-water intake, two hose outlets from the cockpit drains, and of course the stuffing box and shaft gland. And far back, the rudderpost.

  He shone the light in. Already the water was over the bottom of the engine, sloshing back and forth, but he saw nothing that looked like an inflow. He felt in the water and found the cooling-water intake hose at the seacock; it seemed fine. The cockpit drain hoses were farther back, but there was no upwelling of water near either that indicated a leak. He couldn’t see the shaft gland or rudderpost from here, but they were less likely sources. He’d have to climb back in the quarter berth and remove the side panel to check them, and that would take a minute or two. So he pulled his head and shoulders out, noticing that the batteries on one side were already halfway immersed, and quickly moved to the head.

  Beneath the sink were the through-hulls for the sink drain and the intake for the head. It was hard to reach his head in and shine the flashlight through the small opening at the same time, so he felt around in the water. He cursed himself for not putting on his headlamp instead of grabbing the flashlight, but the water was still rising and he didn’t want to go back for it now.

  He couldn’t feel any water flow, so he pulled back out and went to the galley. Under the sink were another drain through-hull and an intake for the sink’s saltwater foot pump. He pulled the cabinet door open and removed a stack of pans and pots, feeling deep into the watery space, running his hands over the hoses down to the seacocks. Nothing felt wrong.

  He yanked up the floorboard over the bilge pump and with his hand felt the vibration of the little motor. No sign of water rushing in from the through-hull for the speed transducer.

  Then he realized he’d been assuming the leak was at or near a through-hull fitting, when it might be in any of the hoses a half a meter back from the fitting, anywhere below the waterline. He stood, intending to go back to the engine compartment, but the cabin lights suddenly went out. He paused a moment, feeling the boat’s motion, and knew the boat was sliding off course now that the autopilot had failed. The batteries had shorted out in the water, so he wouldn’t be able to start the engine now either.

  He sloshed back to the engine compartment and shone the light inside again. The water was much deeper now, completely over the batteries, and he knew he didn’t have much time. If the water had risen so fa
st with the bilge pump running, it would be even faster now, and much faster than he could pump it out manually. He had to find the leak soon. He shone the light everywhere, hoping to see a bubbling or upwelling of water or a current, anything to indicate where it was getting in. But he saw nothing, just deepening water.

  Did he have time to pump up the inflatable dinghy? Why hadn’t he kept it inflated and just lashed it on the foredeck? Because he didn’t like how it partially blocked his view forward, that’s why. And the waves were often too high to tow it. No, he thought, not enough time.

  He glanced once at his gear piled on the starboard quarter berth, then went back up to the cockpit.

  Of course the chartplotter was dead too, as was his radio, but in his deck bag slung over the binnacle he had a backup battery-powered GPS and his handheld VHF. He turned on the GPS first and waited 2 painful minutes for it to find his location while he surveyed the water for any ships. Nothing.

  When he had his longitude and latitude location, he switched on the VHF, happy to see the battery indicator said near full. Then he made a Mayday call.

  Nanaimo Marine Rescue answered immediately. He gave his name and location and said the boat was sinking. They said they were launching search boats. The Canadian Coast Guard came on the radio then and said they would be underway in their fast hovercraft.

  He repeated his location, then shone the light back down the companionway where black water was over the tops of the berths. “I’m preparing to abandon ship,” he said, “but will stay with the boat unless it goes down. I have a dry suit, and the radio batteries look good.”

  “We’re on our way,” both rescue centers responded.

  Getting into his dry suit was tedious work, and when he had to put down the flashlight to use both hands, it rolled into the water. It was lit for a moment deep below the surface but then went out. So much for waterproof flashlights, he thought. He made sure the submersible VHF was still clipped to the loop on the dry suit.