A storm like no other
In August 1979 John Rousmaniere was a watch captain on board Eric Swenson’s 48’ Sparkman & Stephens-designed Toscana. Toscana had already rounded the Fastnet Rock when the storm struck on Monday night. Preoccupied with their own survival it wasn’t until later on Tuesday that Toscana’s crew began to understand the scale of the disaster. At eight, Tuesday morning, in Toscana, Eric Swenson’s watch had finished breakfast and were pulling off layers of wet clothing in eager anticipation of a long sleep, when they heard a news program broadcast over the Irish radio service. Three men were dead in the Fastnet race, the announcer said, and many more were missing. Swenson switched on the marine radio to an emergency frequency in time to hear a flat, matter-of-fact voice say, ‘We have taken two on board. Two others went under my stern.’
John Coote, the navigator, slid open the hatch, stuck his head out and told my watch, ‘Men are dying out here.’
Standing behind the steering wheel in our Force 10 world, I could make no sense of this report. So engaged were we in our own struggles with sea and wind that even believing other boats were also out in the gale was difficult. Anyway, I told myself, this storm was not so bad. I measured it against the other four gales I had previously experienced: one in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off Mexico, in February 1964; another near Bermuda later that same year; a storm during the 1972 Bermuda Race and the Force 9 blow during the Cowes Week race five days earlier. No doubt about it, this was the worst one, but if we were surviving, others should survive. There must have been some freak accident.
The barometer had been rising since 4:30, our log book recorded, at a rate of almost 3 millibars an hour, just as rapid as the precipitous drop between 5:00 PM Monday and 03:00 AM Tuesday. The storm centre had passed, yet the wind was still in the mid-fifties as Toscana ran down mountainous seas, frothing, boiling, snapping at her stern. The cold wind blew spray off the breakers and our wake and onto my back, where the droplets stung like BBS through the layers of damp clothes. With most of the waves from astern and lengthening out, steering was easier than it had been the previous night, and in daylight the helmsman could now see them and look for smooth paths to run along. We took turns steering, changing every hour or so, and we were warmed and thrilled by our mad surges down the Matterhorns, over the Rockies, and around the Everests. The bow wave thundered.
The sky cleared in midmorning. The blue-green water and white breakers reflected the sun’s rays with the blinding dazzle of a snow-covered mountaintop. At about eleven, a gigantic rainbow appeared astern, arching over the horizon. Never before had I seen a full rainbow – they always seem to begin or end somewhere out of sight – and I took this one, straddling our wake like the Colossus of Rhodes, to be a protective sign. By then the radio had reported half a dozen deaths and several sinkings, and we saw with our own eyes that other boats were vulnerable. Marionette, Silver Apple of the Moon, and several yachts whose hulls were hidden by waves lay under bare poles on either side of our heading as we swept along at ten knots. Some seemed to be abandoned; others had one or two men in the cockpit and were riding it out. We tried to raise them on the radio, but there was no answer. Soon after, we discovered that the antenna of our very high frequency radio (the only kind that most British yachts carry) had been blown off the mast. Eric reported their and our positions to the Land’s End Coastguard station over the medium frequency radio that Toscana carried to meet the requirements of American ocean races.
Never before had I seen a full rainbow. I took this one, straddling our wake, to be a protective sign
JOHN ROUSMANIERE is an award-winning American writer and author of 30 historical, technical, and instructional books. An authority on seamanship and boating safety, he has conducted tests of equipment and sailing skills, and led fact-finding inquiries into boating accidents.
Because the wind seemed to lighten a bit – and also because we were getting used to it after some twelve hours of Force 11 to 12 gusts – we gradually increased sail area by shaking out reefs. John Ruch and I tried to set the number 4 jib, but it ripped where it fed into the slot on the headstay and we carried on under forestaysail. By 4:00 PM the wind clearly was easing as the gale swept away from us, and we were left with that half-empty feeling that comes at the end of any great experience, good or bad. At 7:00 PM, when my watch came on deck after a restful six hours below, Toscana was averaging about eight knots in a Force 7 wind.[…]
It was an estuary rather than ocean dawn – warm air breathing lightly over almost flat water, land in sight to leeward, the unresisting wheel held with one hand while the other raised a coffee mug to the helmsman’s lips. John Ruch awakened John Coote, who decided he would give Francie the morning off and make breakfast. Sitting quietly in the cockpit and on deck we smelled hash and eggs through the open hatches and squinted in the unfamiliar sunlight at the competitors nearby, trying to identify them and guess how we were doing. At 6:15, Susan awakened Eric’s watch. They came on deck forty-five minutes later, spouting compliments for Coote’s breakfast and looking around our horizon with the cheery curiosity of the well-rested and fed. […]
All in all, it was the best kind of ocean-racing morning: fine weather, comfortable sailing, excellent food, good shipmates; and not once did anyone mention what we had all known since Tuesday evening: that fifteen people had died, twenty-four boats had been abandoned, and hundreds of crews were unaccounted for somewhere behind us in the Western Approaches. It was our dirty little secret, and by silent agreement we were not going to discuss it until we reached shore. Rousmaniere’s abiding memory is of ‘a quay crowded with solemn men and women – wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons and many friends – staring mournfully out to the English Channel. Plymouth has been a naval and a maritime port for many centuries, and so this wharf must have served as a widow’s walk many hundreds of times. But I wonder if ever in its history it had supported so many people whose hearts were aching for over two thousand yachtsmen.’