Crazy story. Looks almost like a mutiny occured. Why on earth anyone would try to skirt a hurricane seems strange, for sure. Interesting, and very sobering, read however.
This is very similar to the incident with the S/V Mistral that was outlined in Jungers book The Perfect Storm. The crew underwent a Coast Guard rescue against the wishes of the Captain, the boat was found later intact.
Why would anyone name a boat Albatross?
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Jon Caisson Bozeman
S/V Little Miss Magic, Pirates Cove, AL
I'd have to agree... calling a boat Albatross is a bit less than sensible.
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Sailingdog Telstar 28
New England
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)
If you're new to the Sailnet Forums... please read this POST.
Maybe it was because his favorite book was :The Old Man and The Sea".
__________________ S/V Scheherazade
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I had a dream, I was sailing, I was happy, I was even smiling. Then I looked down and saw that I was on a multi-hull and woke up suddenly in a cold sweat.
I remember this stupid story. Stupid as in "just about every element of it was avoidable, and much was predictable".
Another example of "stay with the boat". Those people who went all feral shouldn't have been aboard, but the skipper either didn't or couldn't read or keep track of developing weather, or didn't understand that late October isn't a great time for even a well-found boat to head to Bermuda.
I can't pin it down, but there's aspects to this story that make me hostile in a way that the recent rescue off a German yacht about the same distance out doesn't.
I guess I wasn't there, so I'd be wary of judging, but jumping in and swimming to a merchant man in 50 ft seas, in poor light? I guess their morale broke, and the skipper had trouble holding them together. The boat did not sink, underlining it all.
The whole story makes me want to stick to canals. They are somewhat safer.
I remember this when it was happening last Fall. Very sad story! We can't second guess the parties involved as this was their reality at the time and they believed that the decisions that they were making at the time were correct for them. You would have to be one scared person to jump off a sailboat and try to swim to a cargo net though 40 ft seas. Again very sad.
Many of us focus on whether our boats are up to the task, whether they are "bluewater capable," and whether they can weather a storm of this magnitude. Obviously a 42 foot Valiant is a very capable boat. But this story brings to mind another danger: going offshore with inexperienced crew. It sounds like they just panicked. And when two or three of the five people on your boat panic, what can you do, besides try to talk them out of it? This is a very sad story.
__________________ S/V Scheherazade
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I had a dream, I was sailing, I was happy, I was even smiling. Then I looked down and saw that I was on a multi-hull and woke up suddenly in a cold sweat.
