Fatal Storm (13 page)

“Considering the circumstances, and the fact that I was in charge of communications, I took it upon myself to broadcast to the fleet a suggestion to the skippers that they consider their situation. I suggested that with night approaching, the seas building and the knowledge that there were worse winds further down the track, they take a good look at their position. If there was any suggestion of motor trouble, rig trouble
or seasickness my suggestion would have been to seek shelter. Not necessarily to retire, but to seek shelter for the evening until the weather improved and maybe continue on in the race after that. I repeated that a couple of times. At that stage quite a few yachts decided to either seek shelter or retire.”

Fundamental Rule 4 of the Australian Yachting Federation’s Racing Rules of Sailing reads: A boat is solely responsible for deciding whether or not to start or to continue racing.

In his 25 years of being part of the race, nine as radio officer, Lew Carter had never seen nor heard anything like it. And for the first time he and the Browns needed to reassess their options. They called the skipper down and discussed their own situation. It was decided not to proceed into Bass Strait but to monitor an area north of Eden down to Gabo Island and 20 miles out to sea.

Little more than an hour after the sked, the storm had begun to turn. The waves were now huge – some the height of six-storey buildings and many near vertical. They were breaking as though they were pounding onto an ocean beach. They weren’t the usual rolling monsters. And they had no pattern to them. The waves were making a low, powerful roar and the wind was shrieking through the rigging. Yachts with their smallest of sails set were heeled over at precarious angles as they were raked by the wind and pummelled by the seas.

Most yachts just had one storm sail set – either a storm jib or trysail – so that they could maintain steerage and be guided over the raging waves. Sometimes the yacht would have to be slowed in order to avoid being
overwhelmed by a cascading wall of broken white water. Even the maxis were being flogged mercilessly. On board
Sayonara
Larry Ellison had never seen anything like it, and was caught on deck at one stage without a harness. He was lucky not to have been swept away. For helmsman Chris Dickson there was another consideration beyond the storm that he had to contend with. His wife of less than one week, Sue, would be waiting for him in Hobart – and here he was in a life-threatening situation.

America’s Cup winning tactician and Hobart race veteran Hugh Treharne was similarly stunned by the waves he was seeing – endless 20-foot monsters with broken white water stretching it seemed from horizon to horizon. Almost every crew discussed retiring or continuing. For most retiring meant the same set of conditions simply on the opposite tack. For those who were more to the east, it was an enormous upwind battle back to safety. The options were to continue, turn back, hove-to with a small storm sail set and the helm locked, or lie-a-hull and just drift.

Tough little
Canon Maris
was coping admirably with the conditions and was pushing well into Bass Strait by mid-afternoon. While the yacht was handling it under a No. 4 headsail and reefed mizzen and was in second position on handicap, Ian Kiernan was annoyed with himself. If conditions worsened it might be safest to set a sea anchor and ride out the storm. A sea anchor was something that sailors could use to slow the yacht’s progress. It took the form of a drogue – usually in the old days a large canvas tube that looked like a windsock – that could be set just below the water surface behind the yacht. Modern race yachts didn’t carry such cumbersome equipment.

“I realised I had forgotten some of the good things that I’d learned about seamanship with this yacht over the years,” Kiernan recalls. “I used to always carry an old car tyre for a sea anchor and 50 to 60 fathoms of heavy polypropylene line. I have a special bridle that drops over the primary winches in the cockpit. The bridle trails out over the stern of the boat. You attach the polypropylene line and sea anchor or the car tyre – even an anchor on a chain if you want – to the bridle and just ride it out. It allows the boat to be slowed down and to keep its transom to the approaching wave and it lets the transom rise. By having it attached at the cockpit and not the stern, the hull can ‘hinge’ with the waves – the stern can rise as the crest approaches. Jack Earl taught me this. As things got worse in Bass Strait, Dick said, ‘We’ve got to slow this boat down’. With no sea anchor the only way I could slow it down was to go to a spitfire jib, and that’s what we did. I didn’t want to go to a trysail because we would be over-canvassed to buggery. The mizzen would have had to be taken down and we wouldn’t have been balanced.”

Life aboard an ocean racing yacht is cramped at the best of times – but in a vicious storm it’s abominable. Seasickness incapacitates some crew – they almost become comatose and are unable to help themselves, let alone make any contribution towards sailing the yacht and surviving. Often stronger crewmembers have to care for them as well as the boat. Life below deck is miserable. Consider having 10 people inside a very narrow and extremely small caravan; there is barely any headroom and because there are insufficient bunks most people are prostrate on the floor atop wet sail bags. Everything is sodden, people are vomiting and moaning, and this
whole scene is being buffeted, bashed and belted by mountainous waves. This is when those who are suffering agree that the joy of ocean racing is one of the world’s best kept secrets.

Dave Haworth’s experience aboard
Foxtel-Titan Ford
painted the grim picture with sobering clarity. For him the Hobart is an occupational hazard. He is a very talented television cameraman who just happens to love sailing. Not surprisingly he is one of the first to be called when it comes to racing aboard a Hobart yacht and gathering vision for the news and race reports. The 1998 race was his fifth and roughest, but he recalls even when they were in the thick of it they didn’t consider turning back.

“Once the shit hit the fan – when we were hit by bombs – it just became chaos. It’s just hell on board. For a start you can’t stand up. The whole boat is subject to violent movement all the time. You’re standing in the cabin one minute hanging on and next thing you know you’ve been hurled into your bunk or head first into the stove. That’s how a lot of people were injured – including Stan Zemanek and another guy and girl on our boat. You might be hanging on but as far as I can see the only safe place is on the floor. You’ll be hanging on – the boat will come up out of a wave and it will just drop, almost like a free fall. You’re still standing where you were but the whole boat has all of a sudden moved around you. Then, when it thumps into the bottom of the wave and stops, you are still moving. You catch up with it. You think you’re in a safe spot but there is no safe spot.

“Down below there’s just people everywhere. It’s a disaster scene and it’s disgusting. A lot of people are just dead to the world. They’re in the bunks and they’re just quiet. They don’t move. Everything is wet. If it’s not wet, it’s damp. There’s water sloshing around over the floorboards. In our case we had diesel fuel sloshing everywhere because one of the tanks had ruptured which
made the whole thing even more dangerous. It was like a skating rink. Everything was like ice, it was so slippery.”

Those who were capable did what they could, when they could, to purge the bilge of its fetid cocktail. Dave Haworth paid a price.

“One of the guys, Tony, had been bucketing out the bilge for some time, so I thought I should do my bit and give him a hand,” he recalls. “He passed me a bucket that was bloody full, just four or five inches from the top. I started to pass it up from the cabin through the hatchway to ‘Johnno’, who was standing on deck so he could pour it out over the side. Just as I passed it up the boat fell out of a wave. ‘Johnno’ didn’t have hold of it properly and the whole thing tipped back down all over me, from my head down. I had my bib-and-brace wet weather trousers on and the bib at the front was loose, so it acted like a funnel. I could just feel it go all the way down the back and front of my trousers, down through the legs. There was vomit, piss, diesel, salt water and I’m thinking, this is pretty low. This is a low point in the race. All I did then was go up into the cockpit and sit there just wanting a couple of big green waves to wash over the top of me. I didn’t care that my thermals and other clothing were soaking wet. I couldn’t live with myself. I just wanted to go onto the rinse cycle.”

By late afternoon crews were facing a new fear – darkness. The crew of
Sword of Orion
, like so many others, watched the barometer continue its descent. It was heading towards 982hPa. Weather faxes only confirmed everything they already knew. The cauldron was well and truly boiling.

W
hen Lew Carter commenced the 14:05 sked on the 27th, the off-watch crew aboard the South Australian yacht
VC Offshore Stand Aside
were listening to their radio with avid interest. As well as wanting to report their position and in turn let everyone know they were safe, they needed the latest weather forecast. They also wanted to know how they were faring against other yachts from Adelaide. To keep radio airtime to a minimum Carter called the name of each yacht and waited for a response – the yacht would repeat its name then give a latitude and longitude. Michael and Audrey Brown would each note the positions so they could be cross-checked later.

“
VC Offshore Stand Aside,
” called Carter.

There was no response.

“Nothing heard,” he said before moving onto the next yacht. At the end of the sked he went back through the yachts that had failed to report their positions and called
Stand Aside
again.

Still nothing heard.

Stand Aside
had just become the first casualty of the race.

Sailed by Jim Hallion, the 41-foot fibreglass composite sloop was built in New Zealand. It was a Young 12 class – a plump, relatively lightweight design that was renowned for its downwind speed. Hallion, his brother Laurie, and a friend, had bought the yacht soon after it was launched in 1990. It had been raced with some success in St Vincent Gulf around Adelaide and across Spencer Gulf to Port Lincoln. The Sydney to Hobart was an inevitable goal for the yacht and 1998 was chosen as the debut.

The original plan was to sail it to Sydney and in early December it left from Adelaide with a crew comprising some of those who would be aboard for the Hobart and a couple of friends. Trevor Conyers, a Hobart race rookie but capable offshore sailor, was aboard the yacht for the delivery to Sydney. Conditions were reasonably smooth until the yacht reached Cape Jervis where they decided to pull into Wirrinya for the night and head for the local pub, expecting to set off the following morning when the weather had cleared.

It didn’t improve, but they pushed on nonetheless the next day and reached Kangaroo Island about lunch time. They stopped there, right on the eastern end of the island, to eat a meal. Jim Hallion had caught a virus which refused to go away, and when they set sail again around 8pm, his condition quickly worsened. The rotten weather was soon taking its toll on most of the crewmembers and they decided to turn back to Wirrinya. Conyers had to sail the yacht back almost single-handed. Considering Hallion’s condition, the fact that time was rapidly running out for the trip to Sydney and that bad weather might further delay them, they decided to sail back to Adelaide and put the yacht on a truck.

One week prior to the start of the Sydney to Hobart
Stand Aside
was docked at the CYC, rigged and ready
to race. The crew was in good spirits and feeling confident. One of the crewmembers, 45-year-old father-of-three Mike Marshman, had taken up sailing only seven years earlier. This was to be his second Hobart. Before his first in 1997 aboard Gary Shanks’
Doctel Rager
, he’d proudly announced, “I don’t get sick and I don’t get scared.”

On the ride down the coast on the 26th the
Stand Aside
crew was “whooping and hollering” as the yacht notched up an average speed of around 18 knots on a tailor-made spinnaker run. With spinnaker and mainsail straining in the building sea breeze,
Stand Aside
was picked up by a sharp following sea and hurled forward down its face, surfing for hundreds of metres. It was exhilarating sailing. That evening, as they threaded their way between two spectacular thunderstorms, they regularly monitored their radio, but like so many competitors still weren’t exactly sure what they were in for.

By the morning of the 27th, they were “nicely placed”. As the wind strengthened and the seas grew, sail area was correspondingly reduced.
Stand Aside
was handling the conditions surprisingly well, spearing off the backs of waves only on the odd occasion. While the 12 crewmembers were far from comfortable, they were happy with the way the yacht was performing. They sailed under a storm jib until early afternoon, when the weather seemed to go from bad to horrific in just a few minutes. The gusts were strengthening – first 55 knots was registered, then 60 and soon 70.

Stand Aside
was very pressed under the storm jib and they were getting flattened by the gusts as the yacht crested the waves, so they decided to lower the jib and run under bare poles until the weather improved. At this
point there was no talk of retiring or returning to Eden. It was then 1pm and they were well into Bass Strait. They knew that if they could reset sail soon and get the boat back to speed they would be off the Tasmanian coast by around midnight.

As with most other yachts in such atrocious weather, a crewmember was always posted on “wave watch”, as the helmsman could not look upwind into the near horizontal rain and spray. The man on wave watch shouted information on how best to angle the boat for the approaching wave. The one thing none of the crew liked hearing on deck was “This one’s going to break!”.

As the weather continued to worsen they were faced with two choices – 10 to 12 hours back to Eden or about eight hours forward to the other side of Bass Strait. They decided to continue. Because there was no sail set,
Stand Aside
was beginning to behave very erratically. It was difficult steering up and over the monster waves so the helmsman decided to “let her have her head” and let the yacht find its own way down the face. He would use the helm only when possible.

For much of the time
Stand Aside
chose a course more towards New Zealand than Tasmania. No one had a desire to finish up on the other side of the Tasman Sea and fly home so the storm jib was set once again. With the wind blowing at more than 70 knots and the yacht now being tossed by mighty seas, resetting the sail took 40 minutes.
Stand Aside
was back to a more desirable course as the 14:05 sked approached. Rod Hunter and Andy Marriette were wedged into the tiny navigation area on the starboard side, near the bottom of the companionway, waiting for the position reports to commence.

The forecast from
Young Endeavour
certainly didn’t correlate with what the
Stand Aside
crew was
experiencing. Hunter and Marriette discussed the seeming chasm between forecast and fact and agreed that their position meant that the yacht was right on the edge of the worst of the depression. They also agreed that, based on the forecast, things would get better sooner rather than later. They were aware numerous yachts had retired but weren’t surprised to hear
Sword of Orion
come on air and warn the fleet that 78 knots of wind had been experienced.

“
Young Endeavour
was about three-quarters of the way through the sked when I heard one of the guys on deck shout with considerable alarm, ‘A real bad wave, WATCH OUT!’” recalls Marriette. “The boat went up and up then we started to roll, and roll rapidly. The noise was sickening – first it was water just pouring in like a river through the companionway, then there was the cracking and tearing sound. The deck and cabin top were splitting open.”

The cabin roof had imploded. The force of the water as the yacht rolled tore away a huge section of the cabin roof around the companionway slide. It hinged down like a giant trapdoor and pinned both Hunter and Marriette in the nav station. Much to Marriette’s amazement, when the yacht came back upright he found himself in the same position as when it all started – still holding the radio microphone. The two set about smashing their way out of the nav station to save themselves and whoever else might still be on board.

Bob Briggs rushed up from the cabin and started calling out names like it was a roll call. He wanted to make sure everybody was still on the boat but much to his horror he saw John Culley swimming frantically towards what was now a wrecked yacht. Culley had been in the process of going on deck and attaching his safety harness to a strong point when
Stand Aside
rolled.

Mike Marshman was among the eight crewmembers on deck when the megalithic monster wave thundered out of nowhere. He remembers turning in time to see it coming but knew they were powerless. It broke at the top and with an almighty crunch threw him into the air. As quickly as it had rolled, the yacht righted itself, reefing him through the water by his harness and depositing him underneath the rigging. Instinctively Marshman felt across his chest, searching for the clip of his safety harness. Then he remembered an early lesson in the sport which said you should never let go of your boat. He sensed the rigging wound around his right arm was becoming loose, so he kept trying to wind his arm around it. The loops became larger and before he knew it the end of the thin and flexible wire that was trapping him had slipped free.

The crew on deck saw his head suddenly burst through the surface like a balloon released underwater. As he was surfacing Marshman realised that Simon Clarke was in the water right alongside him. He too had been trapped underwater by the rigging less than a metre away. Marshman saw the boom in front of him folded in half and he grabbed a stanchion with his right hand.

John Culley was in the water upwind of the yacht. A couple of big waves along with wildly flailing arms delivered him back to
Stand Aside
at a rapid rate. Crewmembers grabbed him and dragged him aboard. The remainder of the on-deck crew had been left dangling over the side at the end of their orange lifeline tethers after the capsize. They were hauled in one by one and lifted from the water and unceremoniously dumped on deck.

Marshman had made no effort at all to get back on deck. He just continued to hang onto the broken base of the stanchion and wallow, all the time reminding himself
he was alive. Hayden Jones came across to help him up, and that was when Marshman noticed the blood pouring from one of his fingers. He had lost about half of the top joint of the ring finger on his right hand. Yet he could feel no pain. Andy Marriette, a registered operating theatre nurse, discovered others were wounded. Clarke had damaged the cartilage in his ankle; Bob Briggs had a severe laceration on his forehead between his eyes; Trevor Conyers had a large gash across the back of his head; and Marriette had a badly cut thumb.

Those still below deck were in waist-deep water. Bulkheads and much of the internal structure of the yacht had failed and the sides of the hull were panting in and out with each passing wave. There were pieces of cabin roof and deck floating around and razor sharp pieces of carbon fibre and fibreglass threatening to slice at hands, fingers and legs. The floorboards and food were floating, bunks had been ripped off the side of the hull, diesel fuel was spewing from the motor, the batteries were submerged, and crew clothing was bobbing around in the water.

There was little doubt
Stand Aside
was destined to sink at some stage and the decision was made to inflate the liferafts. The first six-man orange and black raft, which had been stowed below, was triggered and much to everyone’s delight took only seconds to be inflated and deployed at the stern – attached by a rope tether. The second liferaft, a brand new one, had been stowed on deck. It wouldn’t inflate! The crew looked on in disbelief as increasingly desperate efforts were made to inflate it. Nothing worked. They tried to pull it back aboard so they could manually trigger the inflation mechanism.

Next, much to their horror, the painter line attached to the raft capsule snapped. The crew was now confronted with a sinking yacht, one six-man liferaft, 12
crewmembers and mauling, relentless seas. Their yacht was now their one real hope for survival and keeping it afloat was crucial.

Massive bolt cutters were brought on deck and within seconds the giant jaws were snapping through solid metal rigging as though it were a carrot. The mast was cut free and jettisoned – the chance of the broken sections of aluminium punching a gaping hole in the hull had been eliminated. Two crewmembers below deck bucket-bailed continuously while two others were assigned to manual pumps. Everything possible was thrown overboard – it was imperative that the yacht be made as light as possible; and it was important to leave a debris trail so, should
Stand Aside
sink, rescue crews would have a distinct search area and a better chance of spotting survivors.

The grab bags – holding essential stores for the liferaft – were put on deck. A hand-held VHF radio was located and it was Charles Alsop’s sole task to continuously send out a mayday call. Amid the confusion, a waterproof camera popped to the surface between Hunter’s legs in the cabin and he took some of the most harrowing and graphic photographs imaginable.

Gary Ticehurst, at the controls of the ABC chopper covering the race, and his journalist and cameraman, had completed the day’s filming and were heading back to Mallacoota for refuelling. It was late afternoon and Ticehurst was worried. He had been filming
Foxtel-Titan Ford
fighting 50-foot waves in 60 knots of wind and had been amazed to see
Helsal II
also grinding its way through the storm.

“We headed back to Mallacoota to refuel and let the journo jump on a small plane and fly back to Merimbula with his video tapes,” Ticehurst recalls. “He was keen to get
across Bass Strait to Flinders Island that night because the leading yachts were really sailing fast. I knew I had to convince him that we should stay where we were for the night. I was a little concerned about the winds we might encounter crossing the Strait, but more importantly my experience told me that most of the drama would be just off the coast where we were.”

Five minutes later a police car was racing across the tarmac towards them. The police asked Ticehurst if he could scramble his helicopter and head out to sea. An EPIRB signal and mayday call had been received by AusSAR. Ticehurst shot out of Mallacoota like a rocket at about 3pm, hitting 180 knots of ground speed assisted by a 60-knot tailwind. As they neared the search area they were sure they were entering a small cyclone. The chopper was handling the conditions well and they were reassured by the presence of a fixed-wing aircraft also searching from above. They both spotted
Stand Aside
at the same time, about 40 miles east of Mallacoota.