Our scariest moments
Published March, 2003
Showdown in the Cape Cod Canal
By Warren Price
East Dennis, Maine
Fortunately I have had very few events over the years which could be considered
scary. Perhaps the scariest of all occurred as part of an overnight trip
in our Sabre 34 from Point Judith R.I. up Buzzards Bay and through the Cape
Cod Canal to points north. It certainly qualifies as the most embarrassing.
My crew consisted of my ex son-in-law who is not terribly well endowed with
intelligence, common sense or moral character. We had made a beautiful overnight
passage and entered the Cape Cod Canal as the sun was rising.
I was beginning to feel the need for a little rest and after we safely passed
the railroad bridge I felt that I could trust my crew to continue through
the canal without getting into any serious trouble. After about a half-hour
I got up to check on things. What I saw was terrifying. We were tracking
down the center of the canal and I was looking up under the bow of a really
large cruise ship, very large, very close and closing.
I forget my exact words as I bolted into the cockpit, grabbed the wheel and
made a quick turn to starboard but they couldn't be printed here anyway.
My crew's comment was, "It's OK, he's slowing down." As he spoke the cruise
ship let loose with five blasts of his horn, clearly not happy.
Perhaps even scarier than all of this was the fact that I had been dumb enough
to trust him with our safety and that of our boat.
Crossing the line twice
Jim and Joan Haas
Barrington, R.I.
We sailed out of Newport, R.I. on our 27-foot Pearson Renegade, Patriot,
at about 11 a.m. in bright sun with excellent visibility. We were sailing
to Cuttyhunk on the start of a week of cruising in our old familiar areas
Cuttyhunk to Hadley Harbor, then across to the Vineyard and then back
to Tarpaulin Cove on Naushon Island, back to Cuttyhunk and home to Barrington,
R.I. easy beautiful sails that we had done many times before.
My wife, Joan, was stretched out on the cushions, working on her tan as I
lazily motorsailed across Rhode Island Sound into Buzzards Bay. It was getting
a little hazy, although the Massachusetts shoreline was clearly visible as
we approached the shipping channel to Buzzards Bay. Looking at the loran,
Cuttyhunk was about 3 miles ahead on a course of 110 degrees magnetic. I
looked to the south as a large ketch was passing about half a mile away,
probably going back to Newport. The sail plan looked strange, and I realized
that the tops of the masts were hidden by a fog bank which was rolling in
quickly from the south. I alerted my wife to go below and get the radar reflector,
and we were suddenly totally socked in with about 300 feet visibility.
As Joan was coming up the companionway with the radar reflector, I was very
much aware of strange seas around us they had flattened out and there
were flat, swirly patterns on the surface. As Joan climbed into the cockpit,
I looked at my starboard beam and stared down the bow of a large barge coming
right at us, which I realized was in tow. I quickly looked up and saw no
hawser. My conclusion was that I was about to sail over the hawser and probably
snag it, then slide up to and under the barge, and who knows after that.
So, as the barge was bearing down on me, I spun the boat 180 degrees and
hit the throttle. To my horror, I now realized I had clearly crossed a hawser
from a tugboat that I had never seen or heard a horn, and I was now crossing
back in front of the barge. Thank God, we cleared the barge and retreated
to the edge of the shipping channel. We never saw the tug, but finally heard
its horn in the fog, as the stern of the barge slipped away in the fog.
As we sat quietly in the fog on the edge of the shipping channel. I felt
like someone who tried to cross a street and was nearly run down by a car,
but made it safely back to the curb. And now it's time to cross the street
again. So, after listening for horns, and with our fog horns in hand, we
moved quickly and noisily across the lane about 300 yards and
then proceeded to Cuttyhunk where we anchored in the pond.
By now, the adrenaline was really starting to flow, and over a glass of wine
(several) we started to reconstruct what had happened. I realized that as
we left Newport there had been a tug with a barge in tow out on the horizon
to the south. A fog bank was moving in from the south and it masked the tug.
So we were gradually closing on each other as the tug was moving through
the fog, both of us on converging easterly courses. Unfortunately, in those
days we did not have radar and maybe this whole incident could have been
avoided. But we never heard a horn and never saw the tug, although we heard
a horn later. We can only assume that he saw us on his radar and was slowing
down as he entered the shipping lane up Buzzard's Bay, allowing the hawser
to go slack and sink beneath the surface.
As events unfold, it's amazing how you react under stress. There's no time
to worry or panic the brain goes into slow motion. I very clearly
saw what had to be done. When I looked down the bow of the barge, I first
looked for the hawser it's beneath me! My next thought was, "Don't
catch the keel or rudder on the hawser and get dragged under the bow of the
barge! Turn this boat as quickly as possible and bear off away from the track
of the barge." Unfortunately, after I did this, I looked back at the barge
and realized I had already cleared it, and I was now crossing that submerged
hawser and path of the barge for the second time! But by bearing off and
running, we cleared the slow-moving barge with a fair amount of room to spare.
Lessons learned: If you're cruising, especially in a potentially foggy area,
have radar to back up your loran or GPS. It's great to know exactly where
you are, but much better to know who or what else is out there with you,
especially when they may be right next to you. Second, fill out a float plan
and give it to family or friends, even if you're going to a familiar area.
When thinking of all the "what ifs," the scenario would be: " I wonder where
Jim and Joan are? They said they would be home Sunday. You don't think those
pieces of blue fiberglass they found could have come from their boat, do
you?"
We certainly earned our pints
Betsy Morris
Marblehead, Mass.
The closest I've come to disaster on the water was rounding the Lleyn Peninsula
in northwest Wales in Jadocam, a borrowed 29 ft. Van de Stadt Trintella sloop,
a half hour before slack water. The entire Irish Sea squeezed itself and
Jadocam between Bardsey Island and mainland Wales. Except for the sea, it
was a quiet day, but the sound of the water rushing through that narrow strait
and over the killer rock in the middle was something like the last suck of
the bathtub drain and something like the hungry sigh of Neptune's evil twin.
Flying an American flag from the spreader, my husband and I had been warmly
welcomed in every little harbor. We couldn't pay for our own beers in the
pubs; someone was always picking up the tab. We couldn't get our own anchor
down; some sailor or meistr yr harbr (harbormaster) was always offering us
a free mooring. And we couldn't believe our good fortune, sailing in this
remote and often hostile part of the world; we'd had fine weather and were
relieved that we would never join the hundreds of 19th century shipwrecks
that littered that coast, unable to make safe haven on the run to or from
busy Liverpool.
So, with all the confidence of happy sailors, we pushed out of Cardigan Bay
a half hour before the good folks of the town of Pwllheli had told us to
from a half mile away, the strait appeared glassy smooth. Well, smooth
is what happens to water when a strong invisible, pitiless force has it in
its grip smooth, fast, and boiling. Within moments Jadocam was also
in its grip, crabbing sideways toward the rock at double hull speed. Usually
she sailed fast, straight and true, but she wasn't going to sail herself
or us out of this inevitability.
"Start the engine," one of us cried, panic evident in the entreaty. Jadocam's
one-lunger had never failed us, as long as it received exactly six full squirts
from the oilcan first. Not five, not seven. One of us grabbed the can; the
other tore the hatch off the engine space. One-two-three-four-five-six. "Push
the button. Hurry." The dreaded rock showed itself as a slight bulge in
the smooth water, not 30 feet away. Its boil and overfall grabbed for the
bow just as the trusty engine growled to life and pushed sweet Jadocam out
of harm's way.
We turned the corner of the Lleyn Peninsula, and sailed peaceably in its
lee past lush green hills dotted with sheep. We turned into the port of
Dinllean, and the meistr yr harbr came out in his skiff. "Here's a mooring
for you," he cried out. "I'll meet you in the TyCoch for a pint."
Wrong place at the wrong time
Charlene R. Solomon
Eau de Vie, 42-foot Duffy & Duffy flybridge
Twas 2 a.m. on a very dark June night in 1978 and I was in the major shipping
channels of the Chesapeake on a 37-foot Tayana named Holonunani. What was
any recreational vessel doing out there in the middle of the night with all
the shipping traffic? Murphy's Law: good friends, good plans, all gone awry.
Our friend Bill, a racer and a long time sailor, had just the month before
taken possession of his new home, a double-ended, cutter-rigged, Taiwan boat.
Unfortunately, the month in Annapolis turned out to be too little time to
properly rig her, outfit her, commission her, and do a shakedown cruise on
her. Thus the trip home to Marblehead became the shakedown cruise. And we
did shake with enough stories to last a lifetime, filled with laughter and
fears.
The crew Judy, Bill's 16-year-old daughter, John and Marvin, experienced
racers (Marblehead to Halifax, Marion to Bermuda, etc.) and Mark and me,
experienced stink-potters, arrived early in Annapolis and finished provisioning
the boat. There were enough spare parts and provisions to drop the water
line of the boat down by at least three inches. Still, there was no time
before we left even for a short sail to see what worked and what didn't.
Nothing went as planned. We had 250 gallons of water but Capt. Bill, too
weary from preparing the boat, forgot how he had valved it. Thus we had no
access to water and brushed our teeth with apple juice and used the scuppers
instead of the head. The only part for which there were no spares available
was the red light bulb to the compass. Of course it blew out the first night
of the trip. After many surprises the biggest surprise of all was to find
us in the major shipping channels of the Chesapeake at 2 a.m. instead of
2 p.m. as planned.
We were on a Swedish Watch System (4-4-4-6-6) and John, Marvin and I were
on deck. As we stood watch in this busy channel we spotted the lights of
one ship. Within moments we spotted the lights of a second ship and then
a third. Each ship was heading straight at us from a different direction.
John instantly went to the VHS radio, but to our utter dismay none of the
vessels responded to our many radio calls. We had no way of knowing if any
of the ships were aware of our position.
Unaware of the extreme danger, Bill and Judy slept away. Mark joined us on
deck. After some consultation and more fruitless hailing of the ships, it
was decided that we would circle in place so the ships, if they were watching,
would always know where we were and that we weren't moving about. Marvin
manned the wheel. John gave me a quick lesson on using a hand-bearing compass.
He, Mark and I each became responsible for watching one of the ships, hoping
that the compass angle would increase as the boat came closer indicating
that we would not collide, time passed very slowly and it felt like an eternity
as we awaited our fate.
After 25 years none of us remembers just how long we stood watching, worrying,
hoping and praying that someone was awake on each vessel and aware of our
presence in the channel. Nor can we all agree on what type of ships we were
watching except that one was a barge under tow. My heart still pounds rapidly
as I picture my babies home with my Mum and I remember wondering whether
I would see them again and how they would survive without Mark and me. We
watched, wearing our life jackets complete with flashlights and whistles
ready to jump at the signal that a ship was about to collide. Obviously,
since I am here to write the story the compass angles did increase and the
ships safely passed by us one by one. Still shaking, we were able to continue
our trip. The guys have each had more harrowing moments. But for me none
is scarier than thinking of my babies without us and missing the joys of
watching them grow.
The story ends with us all arriving happily at Marblehead Harbor ready to
take off again on our own boats. Before heading home, however, we pulled
into Atlantic City for repairs. Our crew looked so grubby and tired that
it appeared we had made the voyage of our lives. John, always sharp and in
command, very cleverly shouted to the hands on the dock, "Is this America?"
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