My Almost Perfect Storm

By Hope Wright

1991

The voyage from hell started innocently enough. Nothing unusual about an early spring boat delivery from Bermuda to New York aboard a 55-foot Abeking and Rasmussen aluminum cutter with twenty-two sets of sails and an experienced owner who was an experienced captain. He brought along his lanky teenage stepson and two British female friends from Greenwich. I was invited to join them.

The captain and I had worked together at the South Street Seaport Museum in the mid-70's when he had bid successfully on this lovely yacht at the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy. It had been a long winter and spring fever had struck. He wanted to start sailing without sea trials. A different crew of his had brought the boat from Kings Point to Bermuda with none other than DYS's Tom Holman aboard. I did not know Tom back then, but I did know Thor Paulsen who was crewing on the first leg of the trip.

Our captain, an amenable chap with a large ego to match his large frame, had a tremendous sense of humor and was not noted for his serious decision-making abilities. He did, however, pay for our airfare to Bermuda as well as for our food, as is the norm for a boat delivery.

The morning of our scheduled departure I asked the captain for the weather forecast. "Oh, we don't need THAT. We've got a fine vessel here that can withstand anything!" I told him I'd feel a lot better knowing what it was, and so I went off to make a phone call to the air station and returned with the news that a very strong frontal system was expected to hit around 2 p.m. I told him I thought we should wait for tomorrow. He was impatient because he had run out of money; we had to leave that day. At nine o'clock we cast off.

Having gone to sleep suspecting sleepless nights to come, I was awakened by a loud BOOM, like the report of a rifle being fired, and felt the boat shudder. The number one genoa had just blown out. "All hands on deck for sail change!" Up I raced to see a budding sea matched by rising windspeed. Number Two was raised and I went below again. BOOM, there went Number Two. And so on until only storm sails were left. They were lowered and we were sailing under bare poles. With the engine playing dead and no way to charge the batteries, the wind now a steady 90 and threatening to wreck the anemometer, the boat screaming across the ocean towards Africa, we were streaming warps off the stem and praying a lot.

A container ship heading our way appeared in the distance. The captain was barely able to raise it on the ship-to-shore radio. The containership agreed to lay alongside to windward to act as protection against the storm which was now seriously challenging the integrity of the vessel. We were taking on water as the hull/deck joint weakened from the strain and one of the crew members was in severe pain with broken ribs, having been thrown against the edge of a countertop. At this point fate intervened. The containership relayed a message to the Coast Guard on Governor's Island with the identity of the crew members. A lieutenant, a personal friend, received the news and immediately ordered a large rescue vessel, the Tamaroa, to the scene.

We had been at the mercy of the storm for five days, without nourishment or sleep, and we were weak. My bunk was right next to a port from which I could see the sky one minute and the sky the next. I began hallucinating, seeing a square rigger heading our way. (Sailing against the wind?) Next I thought I saw a Coast Guard helicopter, which also faded away. Later I thought I saw the red stripe of a Coast Guard vessel rising atop a wave and disappearing in a trough, but just dismissed it as more wishful hallucination. Then I heard shouts and cries. The Coast Guard had launched an inflatable which had to run at full speed just to keep up with us. This was real; we were being rescued. Two of them came aboard ARMED to search our vessel on the assumption that we must be running drugs. After a thirty-second search which convinced them otherwise, they airlifted the injured crewman in a basket to Tamaroa.

The rest of us were ordered into the inflatable one at a time and had to wear Mae West life jackets. They brought us alongside the Tanwroa . "You first, Miss!" I tried to board her via a flimsy rope cargo net hanging over the side. "Hold on tight! If you let go, we cannot get you back!" With that I JUMPED as the inflatable leveled off with the net. Just then the ship rolled TOWARDS me, submerging me completely as I hung on to the ladder. Slowly it came up and I was breathless, soaking wet, cold, and shivering. My hands had been banged against the rough steel hull because there was nothing to fend the net off the hull. Each time it would roll, I would go for a wild ride and smash more fingers as I came careening back against the hull. I was almost to the top when I lost all strength and hung there like a wet rag. They shouted for me to MOVE! and GET UP HERE! Then I felt strong hands pulling me up and over the gunwales as they heaved me over the top and onto the deck like the catch of the day. SUCCESS. I was aboard; then came the others.

They took me to the showers and gave me dry clothes to change into. No accommodations for females in those days, so I was shown a couch in the officers' mess hall where I went to sleep. Next thing I knew an officer was standing over me, asking me if I was hungry. They brought out a steak and lobster! My stomach had shrunk so much from not eating that one forkful filled me. I was FULL. I went back to sleep, glad to be alive.

Somehow they had secured a long able onto our vessel and had begun towing her about 1500 feet behind the Tamaroa, but sometime during the night she broke loose. I went for tour of the ship while the waves were still crashing and wind howling. Green water reached the windshield on this 278-footer. I watched the inclinometer as it neared 54 degrees, the point at which might capsize and not recover. Slowly we came back up. It seems that the storm had knocked out one of the two engines.

They brought us close to Newport where we were met by a USCG 44-footer which took us ashore. I was barefooted, wearing someone's uniform which was much too big for me with a rope for a belt. I got from Rhode Island to New York and wound up in the Port Authority bus terminal, still suffering from a loss of equilibrium and staggering more than walking. No one noticed. When I finally reached Douglaston, I got my USCG-captain's license. My mother still wants to know why I can't just be a secretary.  

Hope's Captain's license grew into a Master's license. She had been the Director of Public Relations at the South Street Seaport at the time of this incident and is an occasional contributor to Good Old Boat Magazine and Captain's