Fatal Storm (25 page)

B
ruce Guy and his crew considered Bass Strait to be their home ground when it came to offshore racing and they were convinced they had seen about the worst it could dish up. Only weeks before the 1998 Sydney to Hobart,
Business Post Naiad
had powered through a bitterly cold and arduous storm to register a surprise win in a 120-mile race across the Strait from Melbourne to Stanley, Tasmania.

“We weren’t bad for what some people might have called a bunch of weekend sailors,” said Rob Matthews. “The Stanley race was on the nose all the way, and it blew. It reminded us again that you have to treat Bass Strait with respect. If you don’t it can jump up and bite you.” Matthews was probably the most experienced crewmember on board and had been offshore sailing for 33 of his 46 years, clocking up a monumental 50,000 sea miles along the way. They included nine Hobarts and a race around Australia.

Business Post Naiad
was originally the successful New Zealand Admiral’s Cup team yacht,
Swuzzlebubble.
Built in 1984 using the latest high strength/low weight composite construction technology and material, it came into Bruce Guy’s hands after he purchased it from its Sydney owner in 1994. In 1998 Guy and a number of his
Hobart race crew sailed into prominence when they won Tasmania’s highest-profile race, the Three Peaks. The Three Peaks is a gruelling ironman-style event requiring each yacht to race to three ports selected due to their proximity to a mountain. Upon arrival, two of the crew must scale the peak before returning to the yacht and setting sail for the next port. It is painful pleasure.

Guy was renowned for his meticulous race preparation. “The mast had been out of the yacht to be painted and rerigged,” explained Matthews. “Every track worked – everything worked as it should. Nothing was left to chance, not even with the safety gear. It was an attitude that led to us having no concern about the Hobart race, no matter what the weather. We believed the yacht had seen everything when it came to the weather and could handle it.”

Twenty-four hours into the race
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was 40 miles off shore, having covered 230 nautical miles with the assistance of the southerly current. The crew was justifiably ecstatic. Just after midday the wind was blowing a steady 20 to 30 knots and the sky was a beautiful deep blue. The yacht was sailing nicely under a No. 4 headsail and a double-reefed mainsail.

“We’d heard the forecast, 45 to 55 knots, and we all knew what a storm warning meant,” said Matthews. “There was no concern. We’d also heard the warning put out by Telstra Control on
Young Endeavour
, reminding every skipper it was their responsibility when it came to continuing to race or retiring. Bruce, Keatsy, Steve Walker and I were the sort of brains-trust, but we hadn’t sat down and discussed it. We just thought, righty-oh, 45 to 55 knots. We’ve all been here before. If it gets to 55 we might have to take things very carefully, perhaps even
run off, maybe even go bare poles. We’ll just hang around and wait for it to go and then start racing again. We were also talking about the guys racing who hadn’t seen Bass Strait in those conditions. There were some guys we’d spoken to in Sydney who were saying it was their first Hobart and that they were a little bit nervous. We’d all been there before, or thought we’d been there before.”

At around 12.30pm on December 27, the crew tucked the third reef into the mainsail. Thirty minutes later the rain arrived and conditions began to deteriorate with alacrity. By 2pm the winds were blowing 35 to 45 knots and were showing every sign of getting stronger. The seas were worse than anything Matthews had ever seen.
Business Post Naiad
would soon be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“The waves weren’t all that high at that stage but they had a very sharp face and an almost equally sharp back,” said Matthews. “We were still able to sail OK; we’d sail up the face and drop the nose of the boat off over the back. The boat was handling it reasonably well but it was starting to get a bit uncomfortable. When the wind got to about 45 we took the No. 4 off and just went under the main with three reefs. It was then that the wind and the seas got worse and worse. The wind went up to about 55 but the boat still seemed OK. We could see out to the west, there was a break in the cloud and we thought, well, you know, maybe this is it. It will all be over soon. Keatsy then came on deck from the nav station and said, ‘We’re going to get 24 hours of this shit now’.”

At around 3.30 that afternoon the top batten in the mainsail popped out. The crew flaked the mainsail and tied it down as neatly as they could then put the storm jib on. The seas were getting rougher and the enormous waves were breaking in rapid succession. Matthews was
steering and was having considerable difficulty getting the bow to head up the crests of the waves. He was concerned that if the yacht went down the face of an especially large one they might pitch-pole; stick the bow in and go end-over-end.

“Every now and then the boat would get raked by one of these big breaking crests and would lie on its side and surf along, the bow being pressed down by the storm jib. The rain was driving in. It made your face feel as though it was going to bleed. I had a couple of rain drops hit me in the eye a few times and they blinded me. It was at least half a minute until I got some sort of sight back. And the spume! It was even coming off the water out of the troughs of the waves – not just off the crests. It was being driven up and out of the troughs to become what was a horizontal white-out. It was hitting your face so hard that there’s just no way in the world you could look into it. We obviously knew we had to do something to slow the boat and hopefully make it a little bit more comfortable. I wouldn’t say that we were concerned, just cautious. We just wanted to let the storm blow itself out. There was no panic on deck. Everybody knew exactly what everyone else was capable of doing.

“The storm jib blew out of the plastic foil on the forestay at one stage when we got knocked off by a big wave. Steve went up and put it back in. About ten minutes later it did it again. After the third time Steve and Phil went up on the fore deck and spent an hour tying loops from the sail around the forestay. It was an amazing effort in those conditions.”

In just a few short hours the
Business Post Naiad
crew had gone from a fast, satisfying race into a gut-wrenching fight for survival. Steve Walker remembers looking up and seeing waves towering well above the 17-metre-high mast. At times visibility was down to 20 metres. Still,
there was no talk of retiring. By late afternoon though, as the winds peaked at 75 knots, the smallest of sails, the storm jib, was deemed to be too much.
Business Post Naiad
was being belted so hard and tossed around so violently that even the crew below deck were in danger of injury as they were indiscriminately thrown from their bunks. They realised to run off down the face of the waves in those conditions would be calamitous – the yacht would sooner or later have been pitch-poled. Thought was given to setting a parachute anchor or drogue off the bow. Walker, being the on-board sailmaker, was trying to work out how he could fashion something suitable from what was available. They decided to go under bare poles and let the yacht be picked up and accelerated forward by waves approaching from the aft starboard quarter then, once moving forward, be poked up into the crests before they arrived.

Business Post Naiad
was travelling fast that afternoon and hit more than 25 knots, but still appeared to be quite stable, even when beam on to the sea. The crew was far from happy having to “bare pole it” in a race but they understood it was their only option. Amid the chaos, Tony Guy – who had just handed over the helm to Matthews – decided he’d sit on deck and have a cigarette. To everyone’s astonishment his persistence was rewarded. He managed to light the cigarette in 70 knots of wind and bullet-like rain.

“Hang on, here’s another one!” Matthews shouted as a towering wave appeared out of nowhere. The crew sensed it was bad by the alarm in his voice. A wave the height of a five-storey building was beginning to break some 40 feet above them and they were completely at its mercy. In an instant the gargantuan curling crest extended over the eight-tonne yacht, picked it up, tipped it on its side and hurled it into the trough. Instinctively the five
crew on deck grabbed whatever they could in a futile effort to save themselves.

“The yacht landed on its roof and rolled very quickly, almost instantly,” recalls Matthews. “The tiller extension was ripped out of my hand and I thought there was no point in steering when we’re upside down anyway. The next thing I knew I was in the water alongside the yacht, on the windward side. There was a deathly calm because the wave had disappeared and the next wave hadn’t arrived. My first reaction was to look straight up to see whether the rig had survived. It wasn’t there. It was buckled and bent over the windward side. I looked around to see who was in the water with me and discovered there were five of us, all with our harnesses on just bobbing around. Keatsy had rushed up on deck, really worried about us because of what he had seen happen below. He helped get us back on deck then we all set about getting rid of the rig before it could push a hole in the hull. It was broken into three pieces. Phil Skeggs just said, ‘This wasn’t in the brochure’.”

Steve Walker was below deck during the roll and remembers the stove and oven breaking away from its mount and hurtling across the cabin. The ice chest disgorged its 50 pre-packed frozen meals, and plates, cups, and saucers leapt out of lockers and went everywhere. Some of the floorboards flew out and the anchor chain and anchor ropes tumbled from the lockers that were unceremoniously transformed into upturned bunks. The two aluminium framed pilot berths were also broken.

“One of the windows – they were quite small – had broken and another was cracked,” recalls Walker. “The bulkheads around the companionway had sprung away
from the hull and the underside of the deck had delaminated. Water continued to pour in through the broken window when we were upright so we just stuffed a couple of pillows in the gaps. Thank God we had pillows. So much for the people who laughed when they saw us taking pillows on board.”

“I heard this roar – this tremendous roar – and next thing we were upside down,” recalls Peter Keats. “It all went black in the cabin, absolutely pitch black. I thought, oh well, that’s it – she’s all over. We’re finished. At the same time you didn’t have time to panic. It just happened and then the boat came upright. I ended up on the floor with a whole heap of sails over the top of me. I heard the guys call for help so I flew up and found them all over the side. I can still remember the noise of the storm while I was on deck. It sounded like an express train coming at you, or you could have been standing behind a jumbo jet as it was taking off. It was just this amazing roar.”

Twenty minutes after the roll, at around 6.50pm, most of the crumpled mast had been dumped and the deck cleared. What was now little more than a hulk was being pounded regularly by the powerful broken crests of 60-foot waves. Each time one approached, those on deck would hang on, pinning faith in their safety harnesses but at the same time knowing this might be it. It seemed unlikely the weather had any intention of easing in a hurry, in fact it appeared to be worsening.

The EPIRB was activated and Keats grappled for the radio and issued a mayday. Fortunately the backstay, which was the yacht’s radio aerial, was lying on the deck and functioning, albeit with a considerably weaker signal. Geoff Ross’ Beneteau 53,
Yendys
, acknowledged the mayday and relayed the message onto Lew Carter
aboard
Young Endeavour. Business Post Naiad
’s position was 42 miles into Bass Strait south of Gabo Island. Keats turned his attention to the engine and after a few frustrating minutes managed to bring it to life. The crew had now at least some control over the vessel, and they quickly turned towards Gabo Island. All the while water continued to pour in and the crew took turns with the bailing buckets.

“We were doing about five or six knots through the water but it was only about two knots over the bottom according to the GPS, partly due to the current and certainly because of the waves,” recalls Matthews. “The motor would scream its head off every time it went through the white water and tops of the waves because the propeller would just cavitate. We were still getting knocked sideways by breaking waves and at times we actually surfed on our side for probably 200 metres. It was scary; really scary. We could hear Telstra Control on
Young Endeavour
dealing with
Team Jaguar
but they couldn’t hear us. We called for further assistance through
Yendys
, asking for a boat to stand by. Keatsy also requested a chopper to take three off – me apparently being one of them because, for some reason, I couldn’t move my arms.”

After working on the
Team Jaguar
situation for some considerable time, Telstra Control came back to
Business Post Naiad.
Matt Sherriff was violently ill, and while the crew was concerned for him they didn’t miss the opportunity to blame Keats’ cooking. It hurt Keats to laugh at their humour. He had suffered two broken ribs when a sudden jolt sent him crashing from the companionway stairs down into the cabin.

“I didn’t cancel the mayday,” said Keats. “I was asked whether the mayday was still in existence and I said, ‘Yes, the situation has stabilised. We are attempting to motor
back to wherever we can get to; Gabo or Eden. At best, you may reduce it to a Pan Pan but certainly no more than that – and I would request that if there are any boats in the vicinity we would like someone to stand by.’ The request for the boat to stand by us was in case we were rolled again. I didn’t really get a reply. I turned to Bruce soon after and said, ‘I’m not looking forward to us trying to go through the night like we are – I’m concerned’. He agreed. I again tried to contact Telstra Control to see if we could get a chopper but couldn’t get a reply. They may not have heard us.” At that point Telstra Control well and truly had their hands full. The crew discussed what should be done with the liferafts and it was decided they should leave them where they were for the time being.