Fatal Storm (12 page)

Sayonara
and
Brindabella
were neck and neck having averaged 15 knots since the start and had entered Bass Strait before sun-up. At around dawn, ABC chopper pilot Gary Ticehurst and his television crew were in the air and heading away from Merimbula in search of the leaders. He was stunned by what he discovered.

“I’ve never in 16 years seen them so far south. We got to
Brindabella
first and she was in 40 to 50 knots from the south west. The seas were already around 30 feet with nasty breaking tops. I remember one shot that Pete got while we were hovering there alongside
Brindabella.
She came out of this wave and the front half just dropped down about 15 feet into the trough. The whole mast just vibrated and the boat shook.”

Brindabella
had already lost all communications. The crew had missed the morning sked and was anxious to have a message relayed back to
Young Endeavour
and to shore that they were progressing well. Ticehurst did the relay for them. He then turned east and found
Sayonara
, about five nautical miles directly abeam of
Brindabella
, faring somewhat better due to more favourable weather conditions. Ticehurst was amazed there could be such weather fluctuation in such a small area.

Sayonara
’s navigator, Mark Rudiger, was troubled by what he was seeing. The digital barograph was dropping alarmingly and the satellite imagery showed they were
right in the middle of the system. After scanning weather faxes and forecasts with Rudiger, Larry Ellison was convinced they were tackling a storm of cyclonic proportions. His theory was correct. The weather was winding up towards a cyclone right where
Sayonara
and the other big boats were sailing. Fortunately for them, they would be far enough south to miss the worst of the wind and seas. It was those following them that were headed straight for the cauldron.

Team Jaguar Infinity III
, owned by Sydney’s Martin James, had covered 220 miles in the first 20 hours of the race. The 18 crewmembers were comfortable and becoming increasingly confident that they would achieve their goal of a top five place across the line. The 65-foot sloop was George Snow’s previous
Brindabella.
It was built in 1989 and took line-honours in the 1991 Hobart. Since taking over ownership James had gone to great lengths to improve the performance, including having a carbon fibre mast fitted for the previous year’s event. That very expensive piece of equipment sheared at deck level and tumbled over the side when
Team Jaguar
was about 200 miles down the course.

This year, with the reliable old aluminium mast in place, the crew aboard
Team “Jag”
were hoping for better fortunes. The crew included Melissa McCabe, a student at Eden Marine Technology High School, who had been chosen from a host of applicants by race sponsor, Telstra, to sail as part of a sporting youth promotion scheme in rural regions. The CYC organised offshore and inshore sailing training for her so she would be fully prepared.

In the early hours of December 27
Team Jaguar
pushed on into Bass Strait, thinking they were prepared for what was ahead. At around 10.30am the yacht was
seen to be sailing comfortably, travelling at around 13 knots with the sheets slightly eased and very little angle at heel. Principal helmsman Tim Messenger had the mainsail trimmer easing the mainsail at the time to cope with the gusts. The sleek green and white sloop began to rise over a 25-foot wave then crested it and lunged into the trough behind. The shockload of the landing was not severe but it was enough to send a shudder through the yacht. The trimmer, who was looking up at the mast, saw a diagonal piece of stainless steel rigging (the D2) break with a loud bang. The rig began to fold like a bird’s broken wing.

The yacht had suffered considerable damage and the crew then had the onerous task of repairing what they could. Hacksaws were deployed and rigging was cut away, but as the mast went over the port side it took with it several stanchions and lifelines, the VHF radio antenna, the HF backstay antenna, the GPS unit, Satellite communications unit, as well as dan buoys and life rings from the stern! After waiting for 10 or so minutes to ensure the mast had sunk, Messenger went back to the helm and set
Team Jaguar
on a course of between 350 degrees and north. That way the seas came at the yacht from the port aft quarter, 45 degrees off the stern; a comfortable angle.

They motored steadily for around an hour and a half, all the time fearing a mammoth wave would topple them. Finally it came and it was like a watermelon seed being squeezed out from between two fingers. The wave caught the stern of
Team Jaguar
and the yacht nose-dived almost half its length before being tossed sideways. The mastless yacht rolled to more than 90 degrees. Two crewmembers – one sitting near the companionway stormboards and one on the starboard side of the cockpit – were caught by the broken crest of the wave
and hurled over the side. As soon as the hull settled there was a scramble to grab their safety harnesses and haul them back into the cockpit. Messenger thought the engine had simply stalled, but unbeknown to him one of the crew that went over the side had grabbed a fabric bag fitted in the cockpit where many of the sheets and lines had been stored. The ropes had burst out of the bag and had snared around the propeller, effectively strangling the motor. It would later take a diver in Eden an hour to remove the tangle of ropes.

The 13 crew below deck – many of whom were chronically seasick – had been haphazardly hurled about the cabin. Hundreds of gallons of water had been forced below – through a gap in the stormboards; via the hole left where the instrument panel had been in the cockpit; through the mast gate in the deck; and through other control line exits. Incredibly, despite what must have been exorbitant pressure, the forward hatch had not imploded. The deck had compressed six inches and the deck frame above the galley had fractured. The compression on the saloon cabin grab post saw it sheared at the deckhead.

The 18 crewmembers were left with no propulsion, no known position and no communications. And they were aboard a yacht that had been badly damaged. The last remaining method of communicating with the outside world, the EPIRB, was activated. While some crewmembers began pumping and bailing, two others attempted to rig a whip aerial for the HF radio. They succeeded and soon Race Control aboard
Young Endeavour
was contacted and advised of the situation.

Locky Marshall, a professional fisherman out of Eden for some 15 years, had witnessed rotten Sydney to Hobart weather on numerous occasions. When he saw
the police car arrive at his home mid-afternoon on December 27, he sensed that it was going to be a request for assistance. Local Sergeant Keith Tillman told him that there was a yacht,
Team Jaguar
, in trouble in Bass Strait. Marshall didn’t hesitate and he and Tillman went straight down to his office on Eden’s commercial fishing dock.

Moira Elizabeth
, the rugged and robust 70-foot steel trawler that Marshall managed, was at the time heading for Gabo Island to shelter from the storm. She was on a passage to Portland, on Victoria’s Bass Strait coast when the weather forced a retreat. Marshall called the skipper, Tom Biddy, on the radio and asked if he could go to the assistance of
Team Jaguar.
Biddy was initially reticent due to the severity of the storm and the time it would take to reach the yacht, but Marshall explained to him there were 18 people on board who desperately needed seaborne assistance.

Biddy turned the helm of
Moira Elizabeth
to starboard and the big boat began ploughing its way through the horrendous seas out into Bass Strait. The speed was down to a mere five knots. He plotted an approximate position for
Team Jaguar
then tried to calculate the drift in those conditions. An intercept position was then plotted and an ETA (estimated time of arrival) of 11pm advised.

Team Jaguar
’s drift was far greater than even its crew could anticipate – at times up to six knots, and what was originally planned as a perfect intercept soon became a dangerous downwind chase. It would be 4am the next day when
Moira Elizabeth
, its deck and searchlights ablaze, loomed high over a monstrous wave and finally cornered its quarry, and another nine hours after that before
Team Jaguar
, with the majority of its crew still in shock, would be towed into Eden.

In the early afternoon of the 27th,
Young Endeavour
was just south of Montague Island – around 200 miles from Sydney and carrying little more than steadying sails. The officers’ wardroom had, as in previous years, been converted into the communications centre for Lew Carter and his fellow radio officers. It is a very comfortable rectangular cabin, around four metres by three metres, one deck down from the main deck and a few metres aft of the bridge.

The cream-coloured sidewalls and bulkheads were laden with memorabilia – primarily plaques and photographs, including a signed photo of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. These and other photos told of
Young Endeavour
’s many voyages, visits and visitors over the previous decade. Carter and Michael and Audrey Brown were seated on the long, dark, floral-patterned lounge in one corner of the cabin with the bank of radios on a table – HF for long range communications and VHF for the more localised links – immediately in front of them. They were preparing for the 14:05 sked. Carter would broadcast to the yachts the special race weather forecast that had been received from the Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney.

Three times a day, prior to each sked, the radio room received a weather forecast specially compiled for the Sydney to Hobart. It is broken up into sectors, depending on where the fleet is located. It may be from Sydney to Gabo Island, Gabo to Flinders Island on the other side of Bass Strait, or Flinders to Tasman Island. There is an additional report for Storm Bay and the Derwent River.

Carter and Michael Brown read the 1209hrs weather report received from the Sydney Bureau:

WIND: W/SW 25/35 knots, with stronger gusts, increasing to 40/50 knots offshore south of
Merimbula today. Wind decreasing to 15/25 knots north of Merimbula Monday and 25/35 knots south of Merimbula during Monday.

WAVES: 2 to 3 metres, rising to 4 to 5 metres offshore in the south today.

SWELL: 1 to 2 metres, rising to 3 metres in south.

There was a second race forecast issued from Hobart at 1240hrs:

FORECAST FOR NEXT 24 HOURS – 38S to 40S: West to south-west winds 30 to 40 knots – locally 40 to 50 knots near the Victorian coast – easing to be 25 to 35 knots by early Monday morning then 20 to 25 knots by midday. 5 to 6 metre seas slowly abating. South-west swell 3 metres. Showers. Visibility fair to good.

At around the same time, 1210hrs, the Victorian Office issued the following forecast:

EASTERN BASS STRAIT: West/south-west winds at 45/55 knots easing to 30/40 knots overnight and to 20/30 knots tomorrow. Seas/swell 5 to 7 metres abating to 3 to 5 metres overnight and to 2 to 4 tomorrow.

In the minutes leading up to 1405hrs all navigators aboard the 90-plus yachts still at sea were tuning their radios into
Young Endeavour.
Many of the off-watch crews, prone in their narrow bunks, had their ears pricked, anxiously awaiting the forecast as well as news of what was happening elsewhere on the course. They also wanted to know how they were performing against their strongest
opponents. Some crew, though, were already too seasick to care. The yachts were now beginning to climb swells, some 30- and 40-feet high and despite the helmsman’s best intentions there was not always a soft landing on the other side. Often the yacht would spear into mid-air, all 10 or 20 tonnes of it, and plunge down into the trough that followed. It was like launching a truck off a 30-foot ramp and awaiting the crash – continuously.

What many competitors didn’t know was that wind strengths and wave heights given in official forecasts were merely mean, or average, figures. For wind strengths, a plus-or-minus figure of 1.4 can be factored in; for wave heights the factor was 1.86.

After delivering the weather forecast, Carter began the process of calling all yachts in alphabetical order for their position on the race course. At that stage
Sword of Orion
was around 70 miles south of Gabo Island. Rob Kothe had wedged himself into the nav station. Every massive wave – some peaking at 40 feet – threatened to dislodge him from his seat and the resting crew from their bunks. On deck the two on-watch crew were all securely harnessed to strong points. They were in “storm-mode” and had been that way since early that morning and had thus far managed to evade seasickness. Kothe had continued to gather information and plot the weather into the afternoon, checking the barometric pressure constantly.

He was amazed that by the time the sked had reached the letter “F” for position reports no one had talked about the weather. He knew that to do so was in breach of race radio procedures and might be seen as providing outside assistance to other yachts, but he also knew the “thumbprint” of the swirling storm he had on the chart in front of him, and what was being experienced outside, should outweigh everything. His decision to say something and warn others came only moments later.

“They were calling yachts that were six or seven before us on the list when I saw our wind speed instrument read 78 knots,” he recalls. “The boat was now laying over fairly well on its side. I considered it was a safety issue. So what I did was I gave my sked position and I said to Lew that during this sked we have had wind strengths regularly over 60 gusting to 78.”

It was a statement that echoed in a frightening fashion around the fleet. For the first time every crew, every navigator and every skipper knew that this was becoming a storm of horrific proportions. The news hit like a hammer and confirmed their worst fears. Most yachts were then between 30 and 100 miles from shore.

“It’s most important during the sked that we don’t get any chatter on the air,” said Carter. “We try to get through the position reports – otherwise you find that you block up the airwaves for way too long. But I consider that what Kothe did was wise. To alert myself and others of the pattern of wind that he was getting was a commendable move. On hearing that report I asked if any other yachts were in the area and could confirm what
Sword of Orion
was saying.
Yendys
, owned by Geoff Ross, came in. It was a little bit north and east of ‘Sword’ and confirmed the weather conditions. I spoke to ‘Sword’ again and they confirmed gusts of 80 knots, and that the seas had really built up. They were breaking over the boat, but they didn’t show any concern at that stage.