The Perfect Storm

by Sebastian Junger

  The effect is instantaneous. Tropical air is a sort of meteorological accelerant that can blow another storm system through the roof, and within hours of encountering Hurricane Grace, the pressure gradient around the storm forms the equivalent of a cliff. Weather charts plot barometric pressure the way topographical maps plot elevation, and in both cases, the closer together the lines are, the steeper the change. Weather charts of the Grand Banks for the early hours of October 30th show isobaric lines converging in one black mass on the north side of the storm. A storm with tightly packed isobaric lines is said to have a steep pressure gradient, and the wind will rush downhill, as it were, with particular violence. In the case of the storm off Sable Island, the wind starts rushing into the low at speeds up to a hundred miles an hour. As a NOAA disaster report put it blandly a year later, “The dangerous storm previously forecast was now fact.”

  The only good thing about such winter gales, as far as coastal residents are concerned, is that they tend to travel west-to-east offshore. That means their forward movement is subtracted from their windspeed: A seventy-knot wind from a storm moving away at twenty knots effectively becomes a fifty-knot wind. The opposite is also true—forward movement is added to windspeed—but that almost never happens on the East Coast. The atmospheric movement is all west-to-east in the midlatitudes, and it’s nearly impossible for a weather system to overcome that. Storms may wobble northeast or southeast for a while, but they never really buck the jet stream. It takes a freakish alignment of variables to permit that to happen, a third cog in the huge machinations of the sky.

  Generally speaking, it takes a hurricane.

  By October 30th, the Sable Island storm is firmly imbedded between the remnants of Hurricane Grace and the Canadian high. Like all large bodies, hurricanes have a hard time slowing down, and her counterclockwise circulation continues long after her internal structures have fallen apart. The Canadian high, in the meantime, is still spinning clockwise with dense, cold air. These two systems function like huge gears that catch the storm between their teeth and extrude it westward. This is called a retrograde; it’s an act of meteorological defiance that might happen in a major storm only every hundred years or so. As early as October 27th, NOAA’s Cray computers in Maryland were saying that the storm would retrograde back toward the coast; two days later Bob Case was in his office watching exactly that happen on GOES satellite imagery. Meteorologists see perfection in strange things, and the meshing of three completely independent weather systems to form a hundred-year event is one of them. My God, thought Case, this is the perfect storm.

  As a result of this horrible alignment, the bulk of the sword fleet—way out by the Flemish Cap—is spared the brunt of the storm, while everyone closer to shore gets pummeled. The 105-foot Mr. Simon, a hundred miles west of Albert Johnston, gets her aft door blown in, her wheelhouse flooded, and her anchor fastenings torn off. The anchor starts slamming around on deck and a crewman has to go out and cut it free. The Laurie Dawn 8 loses her antennas and then takes a wave down her breather pipes that stuffs one of her engines. Farther south down the coast the situation is even worse. A bulk carrier named the Eagle finds herself in serious trouble off the Carolinas, along with a freighter named the Star Baltic, and both struggle into port badly damaged. The ninety-foot schooner Anne Khristine, built 123 years ago, sinks off the coast of Delaware and her crew has to be saved by Coast Guard helicopters. The bulk carrier Zarah, just fifty miles south of the Andrea Gail, takes ninety-foot seas over her decks that shear off the steel bolts holding her portholes down. Thirty tons of water flood the crew mess, continue into the officers’ mess, explode a steel bulkhead, tear through two more walls, flood the crew’s sleeping quarters, course down a companionway, and kill the ship’s engine. The Zarah is 550 feet long.

  And the sailing vessel Satori, alone at the mouth of the Great South Channel, is starting to lose the battle to stay afloat. Karen Stimpson crouches miserably by the navigation table and listens to the Tuesday morning NOAA forecast: ONE OF THE WORST STORMS SINCE THE BLIZZARD OF ’78, ALREADY THREE DOZEN BOATS BEACHED OR SUNK AT NAUSET BEACH. SHIP REPORTS OF 63 FOOT SEAS, WHICH IS PROBABLY HIGH BUT A SIGN OF PROBLEMS UPCOMING. HEAVY SURF ADVISORY BEING ISSUED DESPITE TEMPORARY LULL IN THE WIND FIELD.

  Instead of abating, as Leonard insisted, the storm just keeps getting worse; the seas are thirty feet and the winds are approaching hurricane force. The boat rolls helplessly on her beam-ends every time a wave catches her on the side. “We were taking such a hammering—real neck-snapping violence,” says Stimpson. “Things were flying, every wave was knocking us across the cabin. It was only a matter of time before the boat started to break up.” Bylander refuses to go on deck, and Leonard curls up on his bunk, sullen and silent, sneaking gulps off a whiskey bottle. Stimpson puts on every piece of clothing she has, climbs the narrow companionway, and clips herself onto the lifeline.

  No matter what she does—lashing the tiller, running downwind, showing less jib—she can’t control the boat. Several times she’s snapped to the end of her tether by boarding seas. Stimpson knows that if they don’t keep their bow to the weather they’ll roll, so she decides they have no choice but to run the engine. She goes belowdeck to ask Leonard how much fuel they have, but he gives a different answer each time she asks. That’s a bad sign for both the fuel level and Leonard’s state of mind. But fuel isn’t their only problem, Leonard points out; there’s also the propeller itself. In such chaotic seas the prop keeps lifting out of the water and revving too high; eventually the bearings will burn out.

  While Leonard is explaining the subtleties of prop cavitation, the first knockdown occurs. A wave catches the Satori

  broadsides and puts her mast in the water; the entire crew crashes against the far wall. Canned food rockets across the galley and water starts pouring into the cabin. At first Stimpson thinks the hull has opened up—a death sentence—but the water has just burst through the main hatch. Debris and splintered glass litter the cabin, and the nav table is drenched. The single sideband is dead, and the VHF looks doubtful.

  Most of Stimpson’s experience is with wooden boats; in rough weather they tend to spring their caulking and sink. Fiberglass is a lot stronger but it, too, has limits. Stimpson just doesn’t know what those limits are. There seems to be no way to keep the boat pointed into the seas, no way to minimize the beating they’re taking. Even if the VHF can transmit a mayday—and it’s impossible to know that for sure—it only has a range of several miles. They’re fifty miles out at sea. Between waves, between slammings, Stimpson shouts, I think we should prepare a survival bag! In case we have to abandon ship!

  Bylander, grateful for something to do, sorts through the wreckage on the floor and stuffs tins of food, bottled water, clothes, and a wire cheese sheer into a sea bag. Sue, we don’t need the sheer, we can bite the cheese! Stimpson says, but Bylander just shakes her head. I’ve read about this and it’s the little niceties that make the difference! Ray, where are the boat cushions? While preparing their emergency bag, they get knocked over a second time. This one is even more violent than the first, and the boat is a long time in coming back up. Stimpson and Leonard pick themselves off the floor, bruised and dazed, and Bylander sticks her head out the hatch to check for damage on deck. My God, Karen! she screams. The life raft’s gone!

  “I was in a corner and I covered myself with soft things,” says Stimpson, “and with a flashlight I took about ten minutes and wrote some goodbyes and stuck it in a Ziplock bag and put it in my clothing. That was the lowest point. We had no contact with anyone, it was the dark of the night—which brings its own kind of terror—and I had a sense that things were going to get worse. But it’s a strange thing. There was no sentiment there, no time for fear. To me, fear is two AM, walking down a city street and someone’s following me—that to me is a terror beyond words. What was happening was not a terror beyond words. It was a grim sense of reality, a scrambling to figure out what to do next, a determination to stay alive
and keep other people alive, and an awareness of the dark noisy slamming of the boat. But it wasn’t a terror beyond words. I just had an overwhelming sense of knowing we weren’t going to make it.”

  Stimpson doesn’t know it, but Bylander tapes her passport to her stomach so her body can be identified. Both women, at this point, are prepared to die. After Stimpson finishes writing her goodbyes, she tells Leonard that it’s time to issue a mayday. Mayday comes from the French venez m’aider—come help me!—and essentially means that those on board have given up all hope. It’s up to someone else to save them. Leonard is motionless on his berth. Okay, he says. Stimpson forces her way out to the cockpit and Bylander sits down at the nav table to see if she can coax the VHF back to life.

  At 11:15 PM, October 29th, a freighter off Long Island picks up a woman’s terrified voice on the VHF: This is the Satori, the Satori, 39:49 north and 69:52 west, we are three people, this is a mayday. If anyone can hear us, please pass our position on to the Coast Guard. Repeat, this is a mayday, if anyone can hear us, pass our position on to the Coast Guard…

  The freighter, the Gold Bond Conveyor, relays the message to Coast Guard operations in Boston, which in turn contacts the Coast Guard cutter Tamaroa in Provincetown Harbor. The Tamaroa has just come off Georges Bank, where she was conducting spot checks on the fishing fleet, and now she’s waiting out the weather inside Cape Cod’s huge flexed arm. A small Falcon jet scrambles from Air Station Cape Cod and the Tamaroa, 1,600 tons and 205 feet, weighs anchor at midnight and heads down the throat of the storm.

  The crew of the Satori have no way of knowing whether the radio is working, they just have to keep repeating the mayday and hope for the best. And even if the radio is working, they still have to be within two or three miles of another vessel for the signal to be heard. That’s a lot to ask for on a night like this. Bylander, wedged behind the nav table, broadcasts their name and position intermittently for half an hour without any response at all; they’re alone out there, as far as she can tell. She keeps trying—what else is there to do?—and Stimpson goes back on deck to try to keep the Satori pointed into the seas. She’s not there long when she hears the sound of an airplane fading in and out through the roar of the storm. She looks around frantically in the darkness, and a minute later a Falcon jet, flying low under the cloud cover, shrieks overhead and raises Bylander on the VHF. “Sue was so excited she was giddy,” Stimpson says, “but I wasn’t. I remember not feeling elated or relieved so much as like, instantly, I’d rejoined the world of the living.”

  The Falcon pilot circles just below cloud level and discusses what to do next over the VHF with Bylander. The Tamaroa won’t be there for another twelve hours, and they’ve got to keep the boat afloat until then, even if that means burning out the engine. They can’t afford to risk any more knockdowns. Bylander, against Leonard’s wishes, finally toggles the starter switch, and to her amazement it turns over. With the storm jib up and the prop turning away they can now get a few degrees to the weather. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to keep from getting broached by the seas.

  Throughout the night the Falcon pilot flies over them, reassuring Bylander that they’re going to come out of this alive. Stimpson stays at the helm and Leonard lies on his bunk contemplating the impending loss of his boat. When the Tamaroa arrives he’ll have to abandon ship, which is an almost unthinkable act for a captain. The Satori is his home, his life, and if he allows himself to be taken off by the Coast Guard he’ll probably never see her again. Not intact, anyway. At some point that night, lying on his bunk waiting for dawn, Ray Leonard decides he won’t get off the boat. The women can leave if they want to, but he’ll see the vessel into port.

  Throughout that night the Tamaroa slugs her way through the storm. She’s a bulldog of a vessel, built to salvage crippled battleships in World War Two, and she can “tow anything afloat,” according to her literature. The sea state is so high, though, that the most she can make is three or four knots—roughly walking pace. On the larger swells she plunges into the crest, stalls, and launches out the far side, spray streaming off her bridge and greenwater sheeting out her scuppers. She crosses Cape Cod Bay, threads the canal, leaves the Elizabeth Islands to port, and finally turns the corner around Martha’s Vineyard. Commander Lawrence Brudnicki, chief officer on board, estimates that they’ll arrive on-scene late the next afternoon; the Satori crew has to stay afloat until then. They have no life raft or survival suits on board, and the nearest helicopter base is an hour away. If the Satori goes down, the crew is dead.

  Brudnicki can’t speak directly to the Satori, but he can relay messages via the Falcon that’s circling above them. Both ship and plane are also in contact with the First District Command Center in Boston—Di Comcen, as it’s referred to in Coast Guard reports. Di Comcen is responsible for coordinating all the Coast Guard vessels and aircraft on the rescue, and developing the safest strategy for taking the people off the boat. Every decision has to be approved by them. Since the Satori isn’t sinking yet, they decide to have the Falcon fly cover until the Tamaroa arrives, and then take the crew off by raft. Air rescue in such conditions can be riskier than actually staying with the boat, so it’s used as a last resort. As soon as day breaks, the Falcon will be relieved by an H-3 rescue helicopter, and H-3S will fly cover in shifts until the Tamaroa shows up. Helicopters have a limited amount of flying time—generally about four hours—but they can pluck people out of the water if need be. Falcon jets can’t do much for people in the water except circle them and watch them drown.

  From the incident log, Di Comcen:

  2:30 AM—slv [sailing vessel] is running out of fuel, recommend we try to keep Falcon o/s [on-scene] until Tamaroa arrives. 5:29 AM—Falcon has lost comms [communication] with vessel, vessel is low on battery power and taking on water. Pumps are keeping up but are run by ele [electric].

  7:07 AM—Falcon ols, vessel has been located. Six hours fuel left. People on board are scared.

  The H-3 arrives on scene around 6:30 and spends half an hour just trying to locate the Satori. The conditions are so bad that she’s vanished from the Falcon’s radar, and the H-3 pilot is almost on top of her before spotting her in the foam-streaked seas. The Falcon circles off to the southwest to prepare a life-raft drop while the H-3 takes up a hover directly over the boat. In these conditions the Falcon pilot could never line up on something as small as a sailboat, so the H-3 acts as a stand-in. The Falcon comes back at 140 knots, radar locked onto the helicopter, and at the last moment the H-3 falls away and the jet makes the drop. The pilot comes screaming over the Satori’s mast and the copilot pushes two life-raft packages out a hatch in the floorboards. The rafts are linked by a long nylon tether, and as they fall they cartwheel apart, splashing down well to either side of the Satori. The tether, released at two hundred feet into a hurricane-force wind, drops right into Bylander’s hand.

  The H-3 hovers overhead while the Satori crew haul in the packages, but both rafts have exploded on impact. There’s nothing at either end of the line. The Tamaroa is still five hours away and the storm has retrograded to within a couple of hundred miles of the coast; over the next twenty-four hours it will pass directly over the Satori. A daylight rescue in these conditions is difficult, and a nighttime rescue is out of the question. If the Satori crew is not taken off in the next few hours, there’s a good chance they won’t be taken off at all. Late that morning the second H-3 arrives and the pilot, Lieutenant Klosson, explains the situation to Ray Leonard. Leonard radios back that he’s not leaving the boat.

  It’s unclear whether Leonard is serious or just trying to save face. Either way, the Coast Guard is having none of it. Two helicopters, two Falcon jets, a medium-range cutter, and a hundred air- and seamen have already been committed to the rescue; the Satori crew are coming off now. “Owner refuses to leave and says he’s sailed through hurricanes before,” the Comcen incident log records at 12:24 that afternoon. “Tamaroa wants manifestly unsafe voyage so that o/o [owner-o
perator] can be forced off.”

  A “manifestly unsafe voyage” means that the vessel has been deemed an unacceptable risk to her crew or others, and the Coast Guard has the legal authority to order everyone off. Commander Brudnicki gets on the radio with District One and requests a manifestly unsafe designation for the Satori, and at 12:47 it is granted. The Tamaroa is just a couple of miles away now, within VHF range of the Satori, and Brudnicki raises Leonard on the radio and tells him he has no choice in the matter. Everyone is leaving the boat. At 12:57 in the afternoon, thirteen hours after weighing anchor, the Tamaroa plunges into view.

  There’s a lot of hardware circling the Satori. There’s the Falcon, the H-3, the Tamaroa, and the freighter Gold Bond Conveyor, which has been cutting circles around the Satori since the first mayday call. Hardware is not the problem, though; it’s time. Dark is only three hours away, and the departing H-3 pilot doesn’t think the Satori will survive another night. She’ll run out of fuel, start getting knocked down, and eventually break apart. The crew will be cast into the sea, and the helicopter pilot will refuse to drop his rescue swimmer because he can’t be sure of getting him back. It would be up to the Tamaroa to maneuver alongside the swimmers and pull them on board, and in these seas it would be almost impossible. It’s now or never.

  The only way to take them off, Brudnicki decides, is to shuttle them back to the Tamaroa in one of the little Avons. The Avons are twenty-one-foot inflatable rafts with rigid hulls and outboard engines; one of them could make a run to the Satori, drop off survival suits, and then come back again to pick up the three crew. If anyone wound up in the water, at least they’d be insulated and afloat. It’s not a particularly complicated maneuver, but no one has done it in conditions like this before. No one has even seen conditions like this before. At 1:23 PM the Tamaroa crew gathers at the port davits, three men climb aboard the Avon, and they lower away.