Into the Storm

by Dennis N. t. Perkins

  They were flying down the coast at an ever-increasing rate. The wind was at their back, they were in the East Australian Current, and the combined forces were driving them south. It was all good. And the 4-knot current, along with the northerly breeze, created another advantage. The wind and current flattened the seas, so the Rambler had a clear runway to Tasmania.

  With the strong wind and level surface, AFR Midnight Rambler took off like a Jet Ski as it flew across the water. As the bow cut through the ocean, streams of white water shot into the air on either side. A huge rooster tail of water spewed out the back of the boat, and everyone on the crew was grinning from ear to ear. It was the most exhilarating sailing that they had ever done.

  The speed of the new boat was amazing. They were doing over 22 knots. It was a surreal experience, as they sailed into the pitch-black night. There were thunderstorms with lightning everywhere. Jonno was hypnotized by nature's light show and by the sensation of the boat traveling so fast. We're just smokin’, he said to himself.

  They had never sailed the new boat in heavy weather like this, and part of the excitement was wondering what would happen next. With the wind from behind and the spinnaker out front, the bow of the Rambler began to dive into the water. They realized that they would need to put weight in the stern of the boat to keep the nose out of the water and the rudder in the water. It was quite a picture: six crew lined up in the rear of the boat, with one continuous smile, ear-to-ear and face-to-face. “This is awesome,” yelled Chris.

  The coastal communities of Ulladulla and Batemans Bay flew by, and the boat was proving eminently steerable. In just under twenty-four hours, they were south of Gabo Island, after a “rollicking spinnaker run.” As exciting as the start was, there was nothing more exhilarating than going that fast in calm seas and being in complete control. That is, in control most of the time.

  There were points at which Ed felt control slipping away. With his exceptional ability as a helmsman, Ed could almost always make small corrections that would stabilize the boat. But twice, even his remarkable seamanship didn't work and their knife-edge sailing turned into a broach.

  When a sailboat broaches, it violently turns into the wind and flips onto its side. It's like an automobile that suddenly stops, throwing the passengers forward. Anyone on deck needs to swim, hang on, and scramble to avoid getting washed under the rails. People below are thrown out of their berths or pinned to the side of the boat that has suddenly become the floor.

  Broaching can be an extraordinarily disruptive and frightening experience, and especially for an unprepared crew. But the Ramblers knew that broaches would likely occur, and they had faith that the boat would recover. As Ed pumped the tiller—the stick that controls the rudder—the crew watched calmly as he shook AFR Midnight Rambler back onto her feet.

  Everyone moved back into their positions, and minutes after the broach, AFR Midnight Rambler was racing again. They were not only recovering quickly, but they were doing it at night. All that practicing in the dark is paying off, thought Gordo. Onward and upward!

  There was no serious damage, but Ed realized they needed to put up a smaller sail with the increasing wind. They would still use a spinnaker, but now they would use a smaller one designed for storm conditions. Seconds after Ed shouted the familiar command “All hands on deck!,” Arthur scrambled through the hatch onto the deck.

  Eager to answer Ed's call, Arthur didn't stop to put on his wet-weather gear. He climbed onto the deck just as the boat flew down one wave and straight into the back of the next. The Rambler was submerged, and Arthur was saturated from head to toe. With no spare clothing, he would stay encrusted with brine until they arrived in Hobart.

  With the storm spinnaker up, AFR Midnight Rambler was roaring down the waves. The sound of the wind and water was deafening, but their new boat was showing her stuff. They broached a second time, but once again the boat took the punishment and recovered, as if to say, There's plenty left in me! It was clear to everyone that they had a tough little craft. They were pressing the limits of the boat and the team, and both were passing the test.

  12

  Sayonara—Temporary Humility

  AFR Midnight Rambler was flying down the coast, but Sayonara was far ahead. With Ellison at the helm, the Big Yank Tank made a spectacular showing with its name emblazoned in kanji script on its spinnaker. George Snow on Brindabella was close behind, but there was no question about who was leading the fleet. There were 114 boats in Sayonara's wake.

  Big puffs of wind would hit the sail, lifting up Sayonara and propelling her through the water, creating excitement and adrenaline for everyone, but especially for Ellison. Then it happened. An incredibly strong gust of wind ruptured the sail. The chute was gone—ripped to pieces, taking Sayonara's lead with it.

  While Ellison's world-class sailors were hoisting a new and smaller spinnaker, Brindabella caught up to Sayonara and took the lead. Ellison saw his victory escaping and wondered whether the blown sail was his fault. If he had turned the boat a few degrees, could he have saved the chute? He concluded he had been sailing the boat at too high an angle, putting too much pressure on the spinnaker. Thinking he may have been getting tired, he decided he should relinquish the wheel to a professional. Brad Butterworth, who had been Team New Zealand's winning tactician, took over the helm.

  Once again Sayonara took the lead, and the big maxi was moving close to 20 knots. Ellison was looking back, checking his distance from Brindabella, when he heard another explosion. It was the sound of another sail blowing apart. What the hell was happening? The wind was gusting to 30 knots, and increasing. They decided to fall back on their sail of last resort—the smallest, strongest, mini spinnaker. This one was indestructible. It was so strong that Ellison was sure the mast would give way before the sail.

  Ellison got back on the wheel, alternating driving with Butterworth. Sayonara was hitting extraordinary speeds of22, 24, then 26 knots. A pace like that was unheard of for a boat this size, and Sayonara seemed on its way to setting a new race record. In twelve hours they had gone twice as far as the previous record set by Ellison's rival, Hasso Plattner, in 1996. That was the good news. The bad news, thought Ellison, was Why the f—k are we going 26 knots?

  Ellison's question was immediately followed by an extraordinary blast of wind. It hit Sayonara with tremendous force, so hard that it appeared to destroy the indestructible spinnaker. Ellison was dumbfounded. That's impossible, he thought, the sail is unbreakable. It couldn't be happening.

  Ellison was right. The sail didn't break, but the pole that held it to the mast had come apart and was thrashing around. The force of the wind was so great that the metal fitting for the high-tech carbon spinnaker pole had failed. A three-quarter-inch metal alloy thread had been dislodged from the pole with incredible force. Ellison speculated that the wind power must have been around 100,000 pounds.1 Now what?

  Conditions were changing. The wind that had been blowing from behind was now swinging to their side, so they gave up on the spinnaker. With their remarkable speed, Sayonara had almost reached the Bass Strait. Now they had to deal with the familiar southerly buster, a well-known weather occurrence for boats sailing south to Tasmania. The wind rotated from northeast to southeast, and Sayonara was sailing as closely hauled, or as directly into the wind, as its advanced design would allow.

  As they entered the Strait's shallow water, things got dramatically worse. The flat-backed waves crashed against the bow of the boat, and Ellison struggled to maintain course. The rain and salt spray hit him in the face. It felt like being stabbed with an ice pick.

  To Ellison, the faces of 25-foot waves looked like rows of three-story glass office buildings. This was different than the ‘95 race, and this time it was not feeling as cool to be doing the Hobart. It's a lot worse than last time, thought Ellison, but I can do it.2

  Still, the wind continued to build. There was blackness everywhere. The sky was black, the ocean was black, and the horizon was nonexistent.
Most of the waves were now obscured by rain and spray, but the waves that Ellison could see were huge. As he steered up the walls of water, the wind would increase dramatically when he reached the top.

  Just as Ellison tried to turn the boat toward the wind to adjust, Sayonara would slide down into the trough of the wave. In the valleys between the waves, the wind speed would drop and the boat's angle to the wind had to be adjusted again. It was a helmsman's nightmare, especially for an amateur.

  Ellison could see almost nothing, and the instruments were no help. Butterworth was trying to help by shouting instructions, but it was no use. After repeated tries, Ellison was beaten. He screamed, “I can't do it, Brad! Take it! Take it! You take it!” Butterworth grabbed the helm. Ellison felt defeated. Less than a day into the race, he felt overwhelmed and routed by the Southern Ocean. He had wanted to find his limits, and he found them in the Bass Strait.

  While Ellison was lamenting his limitations as a sailor, the horrific conditions suddenly took a turn for the better. The wind dropped to a much more manageable 10 knots. The waves were still Bass Strait monsters, but the sky, stars, and the horizon had reappeared. Relieved, Ellison relaxed, thinking they were now safe on the other side of the brutal front that had gotten the best of him.

  His confidence back, Ellison was ready to race again. But their small storm sails were still up, and Sayonara was moving slowly. Ellison was eager to get the big sails up and get moving. Butterworth was more cautious, but the two finally reached a compromise. They would hoist the big jib—the triangular sail forward of the mast—but leave the smaller mainsail in position. With that resolved, at 3 a.m. on Sunday, Ellison went below to check the weather.

  Like most of the larger ocean racing boats, Sayonara's navigation station was crammed back in the rear of the boat. Ellison made his way to the cramped bench where Mark Rudiger, the boat's navigator, was sitting. Rudiger was intently studying the satellite images that were slowly appearing on his computer screen. Line by line, images appeared, starting with the Australian coast and finally filling the screen to Sayonara's, position.

  Ellison was once again dumbfounded. What he saw appeared to be an enormous cloud formation, rotating clockwise. It looked like a target, and Sayonara was right in the bull's-eye. Ellison asked Rudiger if he had seen this pattern before. There was no response. Rudiger just stared at the screen, shaking his head. Ellison kept talking. “Well, I have. It was on the Weather Channel. It was called Hurricane Helen! We're in the middle of a f—ing hurricane!”

  Above deck, Ellison heard Butterworth screaming for the crew to get the big jib down. In less than a minute, the wind had gone from a leisurely 10 knots to more than 50. What Ellison had thought was a passing front was actually the eye of a massive storm.

  13

  An Ominous Forecast—Storm Warning

  The computer weather models used by Bureau of Meteorology forecasters were a veritable alphabet soup. There was the ECMWF model, created by the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; the JMA model, from the Japan Meteorological Agency; and the LAPS, from The Australian Limited Area Prediction System. Another Bureau model with higher resolution was the MESO-LAPS. The U.K. global model was UKMO, while the U.S. model was called, simply, US. Finally, there was the Global Assimilation and Prediction model—appropriately called GASP.

  Even with all these advanced systems, prior to the start of the race there was no consensus about exactly what was going to happen. Computer modeling of the atmosphere had improved since the development of the first operational systems more than forty years ago, but it is still an inexact science. On December 23, three days before the race, the computer models were forecasting a wide range of expected weather patterns. The European model was forecasting moderate to “fresh” northeasterly winds around Gabo Island at the entrance to the Bass Strait. Other models predicted winds of around 25 to 40 knots from the south.

  The next day, the European model forecast southwesterly winds of about 30 knots, not “fresh” northeasterly winds. Other models, including GASP, were suggesting light and variable winds. By Friday, Christmas Day, the models were beginning to agree that a low-pressure system would develop over the Tasman Sea, but they disagreed about its exact location.

  There did seem to be some consensus that the winds would be from the south or southwest, with wind speeds between 15 and 30 knots, but significant differences remained. As late as the early morning hours on Saturday, the highest prediction for wind speed was about 35 to 40 knots, with the most detailed LAPS model forecasting a moderate 25.

  Around 8 a.m. Saturday, a meteorologist named Peter Dunda examined the latest satellite photographs taken the night before and compared them with the computer model generated by the supercomputer at the Bureau's headquarters.

  The forecaster wasn't surprised by the appearance of the southerly buster that was common for the Hobart. But he was concerned about a low-pressure area that seemed to be forming east of the Bass Strait. While most of the fleet would be safely out of the way of the system, boats at its perimeter could encounter very strong winds.

  About an hour later, Dunda issued a priority gale warning to race organizers. He also posted the warning on the website and other public systems, and predicted that winds of 30 to 40 knots would strike the southeast coast of Australia by Sunday night. Shortly before the race began—and unbeknownst to many sailors—that prediction changed.

  Around noon, all the global models reached consensus. They were forecasting the development of a deep low that would bring southwesterly winds of about 45 knots—near the high end of the gale force range. And at 1 p.m., precisely the start of the race, the high-resolution MESO-LAPS model predicted westerly winds of 55 knots. The storm would be centered directly on the path that the fleet would be following into the Bass Strait. With the latest computer data, it looked as if the American model—characterized as “bullish” by Clouds Badham—was going to prove right. This was going to be more than a gale.

  Forecasters from the Bureau of Meteorology watched the start of the race on television, and they were worried. At 2:14 p.m. on the 26th, just over an hour into the race, the Sydney Bureau office upgraded the gale warning to a storm warning. This meant that the average wind speeds would be 45 to 55 knots. There were 115 boats sailing into the storm, and if the fleet was caught in these winds without warning, the Bureau would look very bad.

  An alert was transmitted by fax to Australia's marine broadcast service, commercial radio and television stations, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Cruising Yacht Club. Beyond the official warnings, some Bureau forecasters took it upon themselves to spread the word.

  Meteorologist Kenn Batt had friends in the race, and he was so upset that he became physically ill. Batt understood what the forecast could mean. He had done the 1993 Hobart and had encountered some of the worst weather conditions in the history of the race. That year, only 38 of 104 boats made it to Hobart. And as bad as the weather was in ‘93, this storm looked significantly worse.

  Fearing that the race could turn into a “massacre,” Batt and his colleague Brett Gage, though off duty, continued to sound the alarm, contacting Australian Search and Rescue. The worst that could happen, thought Gage, would be a false alarm and interrupted holidays for rescue personnel. The alternative would be exposure to enormous criticism if the Bureau failed to predict a perilous weather event.

  The forecasters had issued a priority storm warning, but meteorologists have a technical language that can be very confusing to the uninitiated. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, a gale warning is issued for average wind speeds between 34 and 47 knots. A storm warning is issued for wind speeds in excess of 48 knots.

  Hurricane warnings apply to average wind speeds in excess of 63 knots. But in 1998, the term hurricane was not used for the waters off southeastern Australia. A storm warning was the highest level of alert, and storms were considered to be open-ended. The minimum speeds would average more than 48 knots, but the maxi
mum speeds experienced during a storm warning could be anything above that.

  Experts at the Bureau of Meteorology were familiar with these distinctions, but many sailors were not. Those who had done the Hobart before knew that big waves—and high, gusty winds—were part of the package. The label put on bad weather didn't make that much difference.

  In fact, a number of sailors thought that the gale warning issued earlier sounded more extreme than the storm warning sent after the start of the race. And few realized that they could encounter maximum gusts up to 40 percent greater than the predicted average wind speeds. With the storm warning, gusts of 70 knots—more than 80 miles an hour—were to be expected. A storm warning at sea is a frightening forecast, even if the full danger was not well understood by many racers.

  The sailors’ difficulty in comprehending the weather was further complicated by the complexity of the sea state predictions. Again, more arcane terminology. The term wind waves refers to waves generated by local prevailing winds, but the term swell waves refers to waves generated by winds from a distant weather system. Sea state is the combination of both.

  Forecasts of waves also vary according to their location. Coastal wave forecasts are given in meters and use phrases such as significant wave height—the average height of the highest one-third of the waves. Forecasts for the high seas use descriptive terms such as slight, moderate, and rough. Sailors would need a separate table to relate these descriptive terms to the heights they represent. And to clearly understand the forecast, they would need to know that—in open water—a wave of 1.86 times the significant wave height can be expected in every 1,000 waves.

  During the race, the storm warning for coastal waters predicted wave heights of about 13 to 23 feet. Storm warnings for the high seas mentioned “rough” seas and “moderate to heavy” swells, which could be expected to result in a combined significant wave height of 23 feet. This meant that individual waves almost twice that size could be expected. And that was not the worst of it.