By 8 a.m. Dec. 29, when the favored U.S. yacht Sayonara—with billionaire owner Larry Ellison, 54, CEO of Oracle Corp., on board—completed the 725-mile course, the race stood as the deadliest in Sydney-to-Hobart's 54-year history. The following day, the 40-foot Business Post Naiad was towed into the fishing port of Eden with the bodies of Tasmanian skipper Bruce Guy, 51, and his neighbor Phil Skeggs, 34. (Guy had suffered a heart attack; Skeggs had drowned, trapped in his safety harness when the yacht overturned.) Three Sydney sailors aboard the Winston Churchill—Jim Lawler, 59, Michael Bannister, 48, and John Dean, 47—were drowned when their life raft capsized, and British Olympic sailor Glyn Charles, 33, was presumed dead after being swept off the deck of the Sword of Orion. As officials announced inquiries into the disaster, and others debated whether the competition should have been postponed or stopped, racers and rescuers recalled their ordeals. Here are some of their stories.
Mike Marshman, 45, crew member aboard the yacht VC Offshore Stand Aside:
Coming down the coast that first day we were high as kites, absolutely flying. We were racing pretty much in the kind of weather we expected. We thought there would be 50-knot winds. But within half an hour, they turned and were up to 75. Then the waves! They were huge. If someone had told me, I'd have said, "Bull—waves don't get this big!" Now we know they do.
Peter Joubert, 74, of Melbourne, owner and skipper of the Kingurra and a veteran of 27 Sydney-to-Hobart races:
It was heading towards evening [Sunday, Dec. 27], and the winds were screaming. It was an absolute maelstrom, like a scene from hell. I was asleep at the time the first big wave hit; then I found myself being flung about in the cabin. We were vertical. I was breathless, and I knew I had broken some ribs.
We got a pump going—there must have been three or four tons of water in the boat. I could hear these cries from the cockpit: "We've got men overboard!" They got one fellow back—two people pulled him in by his safety line. Two others tried to pull John Campbell in, but his arms slipped right out of his life jacket. In the meantime, I'm on the radio saying, "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!" There was so much foam in the sea you couldn't see anything. I told the crew to throw the [emergency] beacon overboard, hoping it would float near John.
John Campbell, 32, of Seattle, crew member on the Kingurra:
An extremely large wave came crashing onto the deck, the boat rolled, and I hit my chin pretty hard. I was completely unconscious. When the boat righted itself, I was dragging behind it by my harness. My friend Peter [Meikle] went to work trying to pull me out of the drink, and he managed all by himself to hoist me up. But he couldn't get me over the lifeline. Suddenly I slipped right out of my jacket and my harness. I slipped out of Peter's grasp.
I came to in the water and saw the boat a quarter to half a mile away. I have this memory of debating with myself whether this was all a dream or reality. Slowly I started to realize that I was actually swimming in the ocean and that I was in significant trouble.
Melissa McCabe, 18, Australian high school student who won a berth as a deckhand on the Team Jaguar Infinity III by winning an essay competition:
People were being sick. When the wave hit, the deck above me cracked. It was like a waterfall in the middle of the boat. One of the girls told me to get up on deck, but the guys on deck sent us straight back below. It was too dangerous. I didn't think I was going to die, but I definitely wanted to be out of there.
John Flannery, aboard the Nokia:
Even though we were the biggest boat out there, a lot of us were just getting flung bodily from one side of the boat to the other. I unclipped my safety harness once to go somewhere. We were hit by a wave and I was thrown 20 feet across the other side of the boat and right into one of my teammates. I was lucky I didn't go over because I was unclipped. The radio was a mess. There were maydays and distress calls everywhere. Flares popping up all over the place. It was berserk.
Carl Watson, 44, of Sydney, a helmsman aboard the Sword of Orion:
We told the radio ship Endeavour that we were getting 70-to-75-knot winds. When that information was relayed back to the rest of the fleet, many of them decided to turn back. Almost two hours later, we got hit by a huge wave. The boom came flying across the deck and hit the wheel. Glyn [British Olympian Glyn Charles] was steering at the time. We all wonder if the wheel didn't crash into him. He was flung off the ship without his safety harness—it snapped with the impact of the wave.
Within 30 seconds, he was nearly 100 meters from us. There wasn't a thing we could do. We had all the rescue equipment overboard within 30 seconds, but we were drifting rapidly away from him. We never saw him again. [Charles's body has not been recovered.]
John Campbell, in the sea off the stern of the Kingurra:
All my energies were focused on doing whatever I could to get back to the boat or try to get them to spot me. I had no idea if they knew where I was. I was yelling out but realized that there was no way they could hear me with the wind. It was this screeching, deafening howling. As they got farther and farther away, my hopes of surviving were starting to fade.
Kristy McAlister, 30, of Canberra, paramedic on the SouthCare ambulance helicopter, as she prepared to be lowered into the sea on a safety harness to rescue two men:
I was petrified. It was my first sea rescue, there wasn't a lot of visibility, and there were 60-to-70-foot waves. I just looked at the sea and thought, "Oh. My. God." On my first winch down, just as I was hitting the water, one of the waves came in, and I was dumped under the water for quite some time before I came up. But I didn't panic, although I did swallow a fair bit of seawater, which made me quite sick. Eventually I made it to the surface and made my way as best I could to a man who was floating separate from the life raft.
I take my hat off to the other paramedic, Peter Davidson. He did eight rescues by himself, and I was exhausted after two. With the freak waves coming in, it was quite difficult for our pilot as well: At one stage the chopper was 60 feet above the water, but when the wave came in he was only 10 feet above it.
Steve Walker, 45, crew member of the Business Post Naiad, which had capsized:
We heard Rob [Matthews] calling for Phil [Skeggs, who, when the boat overturned, had been pulled underwater and drowned]. We didn't hear Phil answer and couldn't do anything about it. Bruce [Guy] was beside the main hatchway. As he tried to get up, he had a seizure and died in my arms.
Mark Rudiger, 44, navigator for the Sayonara:
Everybody was getting really tired, sore, bruised and beat up. At that point we were concentrating on trying to get the boat safely through this weather. We weren't really racing. We never thought about quitting. For us, the safest and fastest way out of the system was to continue the direction we were heading, toward the finish line. The weather was worse behind us.
John Campbell, off the Kingurra, who had been in the water for nearly 40 minutes and was beginning to suffer the effects of hypothermia:
There was a point I didn't think I was going to survive. I don't recall specifically getting really tired or thinking I couldn't go on any longer—I just tried to swim towards the boat when I saw it. The next real strong image that I have is a flare going up on the boat, and I couldn't understand why they were doing that. But moments after that, I heard the helicopter screaming over my head. I was elated.
Senior constable Barry Barclay, 37, winch operator on the Victoria police Air Wing rescue helicopter:
We got a message from the rescue center to track toward the Kingurra, and I knew we could get there in 10 minutes. Kingurra gave us an approximate position to where the man overboard was. It was in fading light. We saw one of the life rings first, but there was no one there. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that wasn't supposed to be there. It was John. He was wearing just long Johns and a T-shirt, and his teeth were chattering.
Campbell:
I was waving my arms frantically, just trying to get their attention. They did a fantastic job of putting someone close to me. After talking to the rescue guys later, I realized what a challenge that must have been. When I got up in the helicopter, I just kept saying thank you.
David Rout, 66, Kingurra crew member:
They told us they pulled John out, but we didn't know then if it was a body. Then we got another message to say he was alive, and our spirits went up two hundredfold.
Peter Meikle, 32, Kingurra crew member:
I had told John that if he raced this year, I'd guarantee that he'd make it to Hobart or I'd pay his airfare home. It's a small price.
Pam Lambert
Dennis Passa in Brisbane, Paul Connolly in Sydney, Craig Henderson in Eden and Lyndon Stambler in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Dennis Passa,
- Paul Connolly,
- Craig Henderson,
- Lyndon Stambler.
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