Fatal Storm
Authors: Rob Mundle
I dedicate this book to the memory of the six sailors who perished and to the rescue crews, without whose valiant efforts, many more lives would surely have been lost.
ONE Are you doing the Hobart this year?
APPENDIX II Hugo van Kretschmar CYCA commodore, 1998
APPENDIX III Roger Badham meteorologist
APPENDIX IV Australian Maritime Safety Authority
I
clearly remember Rob Mundle’s solemn news on his late-night Sydney to Hobart race update on television on December 26, 1998. He said he had spoken with meteorologist Roger Badham and reported the Sydney to Hobart race fleet, which was then flying down the NSW coast, could find themselves sailing into a severe depression that was forming in Bass Strait. It had the credentials of a cyclone, but worse still, the westerly winds it would generate would be in the opposite direction to the strong current.
I knew that could only mean huge waves and horrific sailing conditions. My mind immediately went back to August 1979 when I was the helmsman on the Australian Admiral’s Cup yacht,
Impetuous
, in the disastrous Fastnet Race out of Cowes, England. That race claimed the lives of 15 fellow yachtsmen. After we rounded Lands End – the south-west tip of England – we received a weather forecast saying we could “expect a north-westerly change with wind gusts of 30 to 40 knots”. The first gusts, which came in at around 10pm, were at 60 knots. They later rose to 80 knots.
It appears a similar thing happened in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart – gusts of around 92 knots were registered at Wilsons Promontory, a point due west of the fleet.
The carnage that resulted was for me, unbelievable, but in hindsight understandable when we saw on television the size of the waves and the strength of the wind. The rescue effort was remarkable and I say without hesitation that our nation is deeply indebted to those who took part. At the same time my deepest sympathy
goes to the family and friends of those who died in this tragic event. Hopefully the lessons learned will be studied calmly and applied to all future offshore races.
Australia is an island continent founded by seafarers and even to this day is largely dependent on sea trade. It is because ours is a sport which fosters the qualities of our forebears – daring, comradeship, endurance and the risks that the ocean carries with it – that so many of us enjoy offshore sailing.
For me, the best words relating to this tragedy come from the great Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon.
“No game was ever worth a rap for a rational man to play
Into which no accident, no mishap, could possibly find its way.“
Sir James Hardy
I
t was a contest that went to the threshold of being the worst sporting disaster the world had seen – 40, possibly 50, competitors on the brink of losing their lives! Still, it was a terrible tragedy.
Now, it is 10 years since those fateful 48 hours – two days where the nation, and much of the world, focused on a few hundred square miles of cruel ocean off the southeast corner of the Australian mainland. This was the scene of a massive search and rescue effort that was almost beyond comprehension; one where sinking and damaged yachts were scattered like unwanted debris across a heinous, storm-lashed ocean, while helpless crews – men, women and youngsters – prayed for salvation, all the time knowing that the next mountainous wave coming their way might claim them.
Sadly, for some, that is what happened.
Just 24 hours before the storm struck, these everyday individuals were among more than 1000 serious, and not-so-serious, “yachties” who had set sail ever so innocently on one of the world’s truly great ocean adventures – the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. They were in eager anticipation of the excitement and challenges that lay ahead on the famous 630 nautical mile passage – and as an added attraction there were the equally legendary dockside parties that would follow in Hobart.
Fatal Storm
chronicles their story and that of the race; a saga that details an abominable, hurricane-like weather cell that exploded in the path of the fleet and generated conditions that anyone without salt in their veins would
struggle to visualise – nefarious waves shaped like sheer mountain ranges that were on the march; at times more than 30 metres (100 feet) high, and breaking! (Look from the street to the top of a building at least 10 storeys high and things come into perspective.) However, one must also appreciate that there was far more to this equation – the wind at the time was screeching at near hurricane force.
Today, 10 years on, there is more to tell. It’s about the people who realised that death’s door was ajar, and lived to tell their story. It’s also about the positives that have come to the world as a consequence of the tragedy. And this new edition continues to stand as a tribute to so many brave rescuers, and competing sailors, whose heroic deeds saved the lives of others while they risked their own.
The original story that made
Fatal Storm
an international bestseller remains intact – it is as it was when first written on a massive wave of adrenaline when we were all a decade younger. However, as one would expect, remarkable stories of exceptional heroism and miraculous escapes continued to surface for a considerable time after the event, and fortunately this new edition of the book has presented the opportunity to record some of those amazing revelations. It’s something that gives readers an even greater insight into this tragedy.
For example, there is a spine-chilling expansion of the extraordinary rescue of the American, John Campbell, the first competitor mentioned in the book on the opening page. The pilot of the Victoria Police Air Wing helicopter, Darryl Jones, who weaved a web of aerial magic in manoeuvring his machine to where the extremely dangerous rescue could be executed, reveals just how incredibly close he, his two fellow crewmen and Campbell went to crashing into the ocean after the American had been winched aboard the chopper. And there is wonderful news from Campbell himself in his native Seattle; he has
moved on, married, is the father of two beautiful daughters – and he has never been back to offshore yacht racing.
For Steve Kulmar – who saw friend and crewmate Glyn Charles perish when the yacht,
Sword of Orion
, was overwhelmed by a giant wave – his desire to go ocean racing again has also been extinguished. “Until this race I kind of assumed I was indestructible,” he said when casting his mind back to 1998. “It took me a long while to put Glyn’s death aside. I ended up sitting on a couch for seven or eight months talking to a psychologist about how to get over it. It was quite shattering.”
It’s a similar story for Garry “Skippy” Schipper, who was at the centre of the first incident in the race; he was hurled overboard the first night out, and then recovered thanks to an incredible set of circumstances. His demons are still present after 10 years: “As recently as a month ago I had nightmares and woke up in a cold sweat,” he revealed. Yet Bruce Gould, who had three crewmates lose their lives after the classic cutter,
Winston Churchill
, was smashed by an enormous rogue wave and sunk, regained control of his life by confronting the demons head-on. By the end of 2007 he had sailed in eight of the nine Hobart races that had been staged since the disaster.
As calamitous as this storm was, it has, in the true sense of the old adage “experience is the best teacher”, made the world a better place. This tragedy was again a reminder for everyone that Mother Nature always holds the upper hand, just as has been seen during the past decade with the huge tsunami that overwhelmed parts of Indonesia in 2004, and the powerful earthquake that struck central China in 2008. The ramifications from the Sydney to Hobart race storm, and the associated rescue effort, reverberated worldwide. The events were in some cases so unique that they had not previously been considered possible by the sport, or search and rescue organisations.
Today, new safety standards have been set internationally for ocean racing, some aspects of search and rescue operations changed, and maritime weather forecasting improved…all because of a single-minded, wicked storm that formed in Bass Strait and hit a yacht race fleet on December 27, 1998. Australian-based international yachting meteorologist Roger Badham, the man who rang the first alarm bells relating to the magnitude of the storm 24 hours before it hit, tells how the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race is now seen worldwide as a “classic example of how things can go wrong”, and has led to a far more conservative forecasting procedure, and a more cautious approach by race organisers towards the starting of events when rough weather is predicted.
Beyond all this, search and rescue organisations across Australia have directly benefited as an extension of this calamity. Within months of it having occurred, officials from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which organises the classic, created the CYCA Sydney Hobart Yacht Race Safety of Life at Sea Trusts (SOLAS), with three principal aims: to assist the needs of immediate family of those lost at sea during Australian Yachting Federation sanctioned races; to provide assistance to search and rescue organisations; and to foster research and training to improve procedures and equipment for use at sea. The trust has also, in a very low profile way, been active in supporting families directly impacted by a loss of life in the tragic race. By mid-2008 more than $430,000 had been raised, primarily from CYCA members, and distributed to a wide range of worthy causes. We say with pride that a significant donation was also made to the SOLAS fund from a special
Fatal Storm
sales promotion.
Now, we step back a decade to the original story of what was a
Fatal Storm…
I
t was always known that one day the ultimate storm might be delivered to the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. And that is exactly what happened in the 54th staging of the classic.
Since its inception in 1945 the race has stood as an Australian sporting icon. Each year, from the start on Boxing Day, December 26, until the yachts reach the finish line 630 nautical miles away, Australians have devoured news of its progress via television, newspapers and radio.
Like so many other “on-the-edge” sports, ocean yacht racing has always contained an element of danger. That is part of its appeal, especially in today’s world where an ever increasing number of laws, rules and regulations have stripped our society of much of its spirit of adventure. The fact that the notorious waters of the Tasman Sea and Bass Strait are part of the challenge provides added excitement for competitors and spectators alike.
Having been a sailor all my life, and with this being the 30th time I had covered the classic, I knew soon after the start that there was a potential for disaster. That was confirmed the next morning when a weather station at Wilsons Promontory, a knuckle of land that juts out into Bass Strait, registered more than 90 knots of wind from the west.
This book details what happened in the ensuing maelstrom – literally a weather bomb exploded over the fleet. It led to the largest peacetime search and rescue effort ever seen in Australia. Of the fleet of 115 yachts only 44 reached Hobart, 55 sailors were winched to safety and five yachts sank. Six sailors died.
I have deliberately stayed away from the controversies that some have seen associated with the race. Instead, I have told the story of what happened in the hope that, if necessary, others might ask questions. It must be stressed that there were 1135 competitors in this race. It is inevitable that almost every one of those sailors has their own unique story.
Fatal Storm
, however, deals with the major incidents. It is the result of more than 300,000 words collected in 124 interviews. My research leaves me in no doubt it was nothing short of a miracle that at least 40 competitors did not die in this race. Heroic rescues, superb seamanship, the location of the storm, the air and sea temperature and, perhaps, divine intervention, all influenced the final toll.
