I again appreciate all the good vibes shown here!! Soooooooooo, Here is one of my sea tales.
It was 1998 September,
Hurricane George was running its course up through the Islands and my
cutter was lying off the Lee of the Southern
Claw of
Haiti far enuff to not get beat to death and yet close enuff to repsond to any
emergency in the area. Well we did get the call around 1600 (4pm) of a demasted 30 S/V with 2 pob just south of Great Inagua, and of course adrift in the Hurricane!! No other info except it was white with a Blue stripe!! (all S/V are described just like this it seems)
It took us more than 12 hours to get up into that area, taking seas over the flying bridge (over 70ft above the
water line) turning for 12knots making 4 to 6 kts maybe. The ship would fall in a trough, like a a huge hole in the sea, burying the bow, and the crest would batter the bridge windows. The ship would vibrate and bend as shook off the tons of seawater and just kept on comin.
I took the 4-8 watch as
Deck Watch officer, as the sun came up (or tried too) the look out spotted something off to the port bow on the horizon. Now the sea is white with foam, Spray is everywhere as well as the huge seas were confused in the Windward. As we turned to port, we added more eyes, and finally what appeared on the crest of a wave was a STICK! It would come and go as it
rode the crest of the huge seas and then disappear in the troughs! This stick (it was so hard to see) was what was left of the
mast of the S/V! We manuvered slowly (over two hours) to finally confirm it was the
boat. We sounded the ships whistle and a
head poked out of the
cabin door. With a thumbs up we knew they were at least alive. We could not board them or send a line over due to the conditions, So with signals we were able to keep up above them to provide a small Lee. This was very difficult due to our ships sail area, we were constantly manuvering so as to not run them down. After many many hours the Hurricane cleared out the area enuff to where we could get a line to them and tow them to Matthew Town in Great Inagua. Seems they were new adventures, on a lark, got the boat a few months prior and well "took the chance". The got away with thier lives,a wrecked boat and a hell of a story to tell. They did sustain some injuries as well being thrown around in the
cabin. Nothing serious. The wife stated she would never set foot on a boat again, at least not with her husband. LOL
.
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