Suddenly Overboard (28 page)

But once it was full dark, he started thinking the odds were slim they'd find him even if they came looking. It's a huge lake, and he could've been anywhere. He tried to remember the forecast and how cold it would get. Carefully balancing on the hull, he stripped off his T-shirt and tried to wring it dry, but he was shivering now with or without the shirt. That worried him; he'd heard about hypothermia and how you eventually lost muscle control. If he fell back into the cold water, he didn't think he'd last long, maybe not until daylight.

He watched the lights on the distant shore, the running lights of occasional faraway boats, the tiny light of a passing jet overhead. He couldn't stop shivering, and sometimes his arms shook hard. He was trying to think what to do, but thinking was arduous. He'd been standing for hours, sometimes balanced, sometimes leaning forward uncomfortably to hold the other hull, and all he wanted was to sit, but he worried about having his legs in the cold water.

Then he saw another airplane, lower this time, between him and the shore, moving slowly left to right. Then it moved farther away. Suddenly there was a burst of light below it, a bright blast of light below the plane, which drifted slowly down and went out as it reached the water.

The plane turned and went back, right to left, closer now. It turned again a couple of minutes later. Then there was another blast of light, and he realized it was dropping flares. This one was close enough to shine white on his skin, and he began waving his arms.

After a moment the plane turned, banking, flew directly overhead, and dropped another flare. He was shouting now, waving frantically.

The plane went on and banked into a slow turn back. Had they seen him?

Then he heard a boat engine that gradually grew louder, and at last he saw paired red and green lights becoming larger as the boat approached.

The rescue boat crew found him with their spotlight and within a couple minutes had eased up to the capsized catamaran and helped him aboard. His wife had called 911 at 6:15, he learned, and they'd been searching with boats closer to shore for hours, doubting he'd be out so far. Then they'd called in the Hercules search-and-rescue plane. “Good thing your wife called fast,” they told him. “There's a lot of water out here.”

Sampson was tired. He'd planned to be back at the marina in Vancouver, British Columbia, by midnight, but here it was already after 1
A.M
. and he was still a few miles north of Entrance Island, miles offshore in the middle of the Georgia Strait. The wind had all but died at sunset, and he wasn't sure he had enough diesel left after days of cruising to make it all the way in under power. So he jogged along slowly in the 8-knot breeze.

Not that he was in any real hurry. He was just sleepy. He'd turned off the autopilot to steer his 36-foot sloop by hand, which helped him stay alert. But time had just crawled by while the boat made barely 2 knots.

He caught himself yawning again and thought he'd better have a cup of coffee. He stood in the cockpit and checked all around for any ships, then reset the autopilot, unclipped his tether from the U-bolt when he approached the companionway, and went down the steps.

And found himself standing in 20 centimeters of water.

Instantly he was wide awake. He flipped on several cabin lights and grabbed a flashlight. It had to be a through-hull fitting, he reasoned, he hadn't been going fast enough to punch a hole in the hull if he'd hit anything. A hose might have come off or burst, or perhaps a seacock had broken. He had wooden plugs wired by each of the through-hulls, and he quickly grabbed the mallet from where it hung near the engine compartment door. Just find the one leaking, he thought. He knew what to do.

He started with the engine compartment, which opened behind the companionway steps. There was the cooling-water intake, two hose outlets from the cockpit drains, and of course the stuffing box and shaft gland. And far back, the rudderpost.

He shone the light in. Already the water was over the bottom of the engine, sloshing back and forth, but he saw nothing that looked like an inflow. He felt in the water and found the cooling-water intake hose at the seacock; it seemed fine. The cockpit drain hoses were farther back, but there was no upwelling of water near either that indicated a leak. He couldn't see the shaft gland or rudderpost from here, but they were less likely sources. He'd have to climb back in the quarter berth and remove the side panel to check them, and that would take a minute or two. So he pulled his head and shoulders out, noticing that the batteries on one side were already halfway immersed, and quickly moved to the head.

Beneath the sink were the through-hulls for the sink drain and the intake for the head. It was hard to reach his head in and shine the flashlight through the small opening at the same time, so he felt around in the water. He cursed himself for not putting on his headlamp instead of grabbing the flashlight, but the water was still rising and he didn't want to go back for it now.

He couldn't feel any water flow, so he pulled back out and went to the galley. Under the sink were another drain through-hull and an intake for the sink's saltwater foot pump. He pulled the cabinet door open and removed a stack of pans and pots, feeling deep into the watery space, running his hands over the hoses down to the seacocks. Nothing felt wrong.

He yanked up the floorboard over the bilge pump and with his hand felt the vibration of the little motor. No sign of water rushing in from the through-hull for the speed transducer.

Then he realized he'd been assuming the leak was at or near a through-hull fitting, when it might be in any of the hoses a half a meter back from the fitting, anywhere below the waterline. He stood, intending to go back to the engine compartment, but the cabin lights suddenly went out. He paused a moment, feeling the boat's motion, and knew the boat was sliding off course now that the autopilot had failed. The batteries had shorted out in the water, so he wouldn't be able to start the engine now either.

He sloshed back to the engine compartment and shone the light inside again. The water was much deeper now, completely over the batteries, and he knew he didn't have much time. If the water had risen so fast with the bilge pump running, it would be even faster now, and much faster than he could pump it out manually. He had to find the leak soon. He shone the light everywhere, hoping to see a bubbling or upwelling of water or a current, anything to indicate where it was getting in. But he saw nothing, just deepening water.

Did he have time to pump up the inflatable dinghy? Why hadn't he kept it inflated and just lashed it on the foredeck? Because he didn't like how it partially blocked his view forward, that's why. And the waves were often too high to tow it. No, he thought, not enough time.

He glanced once at his gear piled on the starboard quarter berth, then went back up to the cockpit.

Of course the chartplotter was dead too, as was his radio, but in his deck bag slung over the binnacle he had a backup battery-powered GPS and his handheld VHF. He turned on the GPS first and waited 2 painful minutes for it to find his location while he surveyed the water for any ships. Nothing.

When he had his longitude and latitude location, he switched on the VHF, happy to see the battery indicator said near full. Then he made a Mayday call.

Nanaimo Marine Rescue answered immediately. He gave his name and location and said the boat was sinking. They said they were launching search boats. The Canadian Coast Guard came on the radio then and said they would be underway in their fast hovercraft.

He repeated his location, then shone the light back down the companionway where black water was over the tops of the berths. “I'm preparing to abandon ship,” he said, “but will stay with the boat unless it goes down. I have a dry suit, and the radio batteries look good.”

“We're on our way,” both rescue centers responded.

Getting into his dry suit was tedious work, and when he had to put down the flashlight to use both hands, it rolled into the water. It was lit for a moment deep below the surface but then went out. So much for waterproof flashlights, he thought. He made sure the submersible VHF was still clipped to the loop on the dry suit.

He started to release the halyards to drop the sails in case any boat motion was hastening the leak, but he thought they might be more visible for the searchers. He left them up but released the sheets so that they flapped listlessly.

The boat was settling deep in the water, and a wave sloshed over the rail and cockpit coaming. He scanned the water all around for lights of boats.

What happened when a boat went down? People talked about being sucked down after it, but he thought that probably only happened with big ships. On the other hand, he was concerned that at the last moment the boat might roll or pitch and snag him in the rigging. It seemed safer to be off the boat before that happened.

So he waited until it looked like the cockpit would soon flood, then unclipped the VHF and called to say the boat was about to go down and he was getting into the water. He felt in the pocket of the dry suit and told them he had a glow stick and would snap it on when he saw a rescue boat getting close. “Watch for a small green light,” he said, and signed off.

He stepped off the stern into the water and breast-stroked slowly away from the boat, feeling awkward in the dry suit. He felt warm enough except for the cold water that splashed his face.

Then he stopped and floated and watched his sailboat go down. It just slipped beneath the water, still upright, until even the masthead was gone, and he felt a deep sadness for the first time. Such a mystery, the unknown fast leak. He'd never even know what it was.

He figured it was only about 15 minutes before he saw the Coast Guard hovercraft approaching, throwing up white spray in the moonlight. He snapped the green glow stick and held it as high as he could. Its light looked uselessly feeble, but he saw the hovercraft alter course a little and slow its approach. In a minute they were pulling him aboard.

Mini class 6.50-meter sailboats are very fast race boats and can be a handful to sail, especially for the singlehanded sailors of the Charente-Maritime Transat, which in 2011 ran from France to Brazil via Madeira, a 4,200-nautical mile sprint. It's a grueling race for solo sailors, who must be at the top of their game and prepared for many strenuous days alone at sea. For many, it's also a significant test of self-sufficiency. Regardless of the team support and the best work of designers and engineers, once the boats leave the dock these skippers are as much on their own as any sailor can be out on the ocean, even with satellite linkups.

French sailor Mathieu Claveau was in the middle of the Atlantic, pushing on in his small boat, catching some sleep in a period of light wind, when he was abruptly awakened by what he later described as the powerful shock of the boat striking something. He rushed on deck but saw nothing in the water nearby. Then he experienced every sailor's nightmare: he looked below and saw water gushing into his boat, already covering the cabin sole. Kneeling, he felt along the hull in his galley area and found a gaping,
ragged hole so large it would be impossible to plug in time. There were no boats in sight; he was alone at sea and sinking.

But ocean races like this one have stringent safety requirements, and Claveau had an EPIRB as well as a life raft and enough emergency gear to stay alive for days if needed. He tried bailing water from the boat but realized immediately he could not keep up. He then activated his emergency beacon and started gathering his gear to abandon ship.

He had to trust that his signal would be received and help dispatched; he had no other hope. Even with a supply of food and water he couldn't expect to survive forever in a tiny life raft. The literature of sail includes many stories of sailors spilled from their life rafts by storms at sea or drifting for weeks after running out of food and water. In 1981 Steve Callahan spent 76 days in a life raft in the Atlantic in the days before satellite GPS and EPIRBs, subsisting on fish, birds, barnacles, and rainwater. He was very lucky to have survived.

As it happened, Claveau was lucky that a cargo ship was only 45 miles away when his emergency signal was received. The ship was diverted to his location and soon reached him. As instructed by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, the ship stopped on his weather side to enable its crew to help him board from his life raft, along with the first-aid bag he still clutched. The entire incident, start to finish, lasted only a couple of hours.

Although the rescue would have been more difficult in a storm than in the relatively calm seas, the outcome likely would still have been favorable because Claveau had the appropriate safety gear on his boat and was prepared to use it. With such gear now readily available to all, in recent years there have been very few fatalities among those who are so equipped. The days of frequent disasters during storms and other incidents at sea are rapidly receding, even as the common, everyday “little” incidents like tumbling overboard on a calm day continue to claim lives
.