A Trial Before the Trials : Tuneup for Olympic Qualifying Races Became a Life-and-Death Struggle at Sea

Forget about azure seas lapping at the shores of golden beaches. The ocean can be a treacherous place even for the best of hands.

And to a veteran sailboat racer such as Allison Jolly, the chill factor multiplies at night. “ ‘The Coast Guard called off the search because of darkness.’ That’s what I always think about when I hear somebody’s lost at sea.”

She shudders. “But you never think it’s going to happen to you.”

The accident occurred at the end of a cold, windy day of sailing on the Atlantic Ocean, a distant 2 miles off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale. Jolly and Lynne Jewell, both world-class sailors and top candidates for the U. S. Olympic team, had just turned toward home when a huge swell suddenly rose beneath their 18 1/2-foot sailboat, the Exy J., and lifted it toward the darkening gray sky. Moments later, when the rogue wave reached its zenith and the boat teetered on the edge of a 20-foot mountain of water, the women peered down into the roiling maw and screamed.

But far from being scared, they were shrieking with excitement, like two youngsters capping a day of thrills with a wild ride on a roller coaster. Jolly, 31, and Jewell, 28, both from the Valley area, were already in a giddy mood after outclassing rival boats during two hours of training exercises for the Olympic Trials. And they also had proven that they could handle big seas and big winds--the same conditions that are expected on the Sea of Japan during the Seoul Games. They were still on the wave, in sight of the other boats, when the tiller, which controls the rudder, went dead in Jolly’s hands. At the same time, the sudden appearance of an object in the churning water caught her eye. It was the bottom half of the rudder, sheared by the fierce torque of the wave. Control of the boat had been torn from Jolly and given back to the gods of the sea.

Both sailors knew the consequence of having the sails up while at the mercy of a capricious wave. Capsizing. It was almost inevitable. That would have meant a violent bath followed by hard labor to right the boat. But the worst way to capsize was the “death roll,” in which the force of a wave throws the boat backwards over the crew.

When the rudder broke, the women reacted in a frantic microsecond. “Get the main down!” Jolly yelled to Jewell as the boat shot off the wave like a surfboard, slid into a deep trough and began to flip. The situation was dangerous at this point, but the women did not believe it was life-threatening. They knew the other boats were still close by.

In the next two minutes, Jolly and Jewell did their jobs precisely. Straddling the inside of the boat, Jolly shifted her weight to keep the Exy J. balanced. That allowed Jewell to release the main sail and lower the jib. The boat would not capsize, but the women were drained of energy. And Jewell had sliced open a finger. Blood mixed with water, fueling the drama, but what really increased her anxiety was when she looked around and failed to see the other boats.

The Exy J. was being pounded broadside by 10- to 15-foot swells. Without forward motion, the speed bailers were useless. In minutes, the boat was awash--only the built-in pontoons keeping it from disappearing in 400 feet of water. Unmaneuverable, without guidance or propulsion, the boat and its occupants could only drift aimlessly, like flotsam at the whim of the wind and the current.

And nobody came to rescue them. For the next 2 1/2 hours, they sat inside the swamped vessel. They felt helpless and hopeless and asked angry questions. Where was the Coast Guard? Why did the others go in without them?

They tried to apply logic to an illogical situation. Something like this was not supposed to happen to experienced sailors. But they could only feel grim reality enveloping them like the eerie mistforming on the water.

Night was dropping like a blanket. The wind had increased to 25 to 30 knots, whipping the ocean into a froth of whitecaps and creating a wind-chill factor of 38 degrees. Just a few yards off the port bow, the dorsal fin of a shark cut through the water. Ashore, lights were growing smaller and then fading into the murky twilight. Wind whistled through the rigging. Sights and sounds deceived them into wishfully thinking that a rescue party was on its way.

Jolly checked the electronic compass, confirming her worst fears. The boat was 5 to 6 miles from land and 7 miles northeast of its original position. In a continuing streak of bad luck, they had drifted into the Gulf Stream, which was unusually close to land that day. Like a powerful magnet, it had seized their boat and was pulling it out to sea.

By morning, Jolly calculated, the 5-knot current would carry them 50 to 60 miles from land before the Coast Guard could even begin looking for what amounted to a speck on the vast ocean.

But that was hours away. First, they would have to face the night.

Jolly and Jewell had awakened at 8 on the fateful morning of Feb. 6 to leaden skies, 15 knots of wind and swells of 6 to 8 feet--perfect sailing conditions for Olympic training. When they arrived at the Lauderdale Yacht Club about 10 a.m., they joined 12 other double-handed teams--including five female--that will take part in the Olympic 470-class trials July 2-17 at Newport, R.I. About 1 p.m., the Exy J. left the dock, reached the mouth of the channel 30 minutes later and sailed into the open sea.

Olympic Coach Dave Ullman had sent the boats out in packs of three, “but it became apparent right away that people’s abilities were not matched up,” Jolly said. So after racing with their group for about 20 minutes, Jolly and Jewell decided to break away and look for stiffer competition.

They joined a group that included boats skippered by J. J. Isler and Peasey Hearndon, both top sailors, and Susan Taylor, whose team was ranked No. 1 in the country this year. That was incentive enough for Jewell and Jolly, who had been ranked No. 1 in 1987. But Taylor also had the reputation for being “the fastest in a breeze,” Jewell said, “so we wanted to go up against her.”

The weather intensified during the next two hours and took a toll on the fragile 470s. Two boats broke down leaving the harbor and another two broke up at sea. Taylor’s boat capsized three times. But Jolly and Jewell were handling the weather conditions and “dusting the competition,” Jolly said. “We were the fastest boat of the day, and we were doing it in a big breeze. That’s what was so exciting.”

As they glided well ahead of the other boats, staying parallel to the coast with sails filled, they were a finely honed team, as fluid and coordinated as any America’s Cup crew. Jolly, the tactician, her long sun-bleached hair flapping in the breeze, steered the best course, and Jewell, powerful at 160 pounds, handled most everything else, the trapeze off the side, raising and lowering sails, serving lookout and following Jolly’s orders.

The hierarchy on board the Exy J. worked smoothly, even though Jewell never thought she would crew for anyone. “My ego’s always been in the back of the boat,” she said. Both women made their mark as a solo act: Each has been U. S. Yachtswoman of the Year. In 1985, although they barely knew each other, Jolly wrote Jewell a letter suggesting that they become a team. It took a year of coaxing before Jewell agreed, and they set a course for Seoul, where Olympic sailing would be open to women for the first time.

But it did not seem like a match made in heaven. “They’re the odd couple,” Jolly’s husband, Mark Elliot, said. A practical joker known as the “wild woman,” Jewell had a reputation for risk-taking and eccentric behavior (she once had a boat named Inspired Insanity). Jolly, on the other hand, was less emotional, more of a pessimist.

“But we complement each other in the boat,” Jolly said. To reach world-class caliber as a team, they were forced to mesh their personalities on land as well as at sea. In the past six months, after each quit jobs to concentrate full-time on making the Olympic team, they have been together 10 hours a day, six days a week. Combining Nautilus training and nautical training with the L. A. freeway system, they spend roughly equal amounts of time in their cars, the Glendale YMCA and the Alamitos Yacht Club in Long Beach.

A truly bicoastal team, Jolly lives in Valencia with her husband, Jewell in Boston with her fiance, Bill Shore, a noted sail maker. But when the crew trains in L. A., Jewell stays with her parents in North Hollywood.

About 3:15 p.m., 10 minutes into the race, the Exy J. was eight lengths ahead of the closest of three rivals when Susan Taylor’s boat ditched for the third time. The race stopped, and as the Exy J. luffed to maintain its position in the strong winds, the other two boats drew closer to Taylor’s overturned craft. Jolly and Jewell, who were not wearing life jackets, were contemplating their last Mountain Dew when they saw Taylor’s crew succeed in righting their boat.

“Looks like they’re all heading in,” Jewell said to Jolly.

That was fine with both women, who were exhausted, and Jolly began to bring the boat around. As they began the journey home, the other three boats were now a few minutes downwind and ahead of the Exy J. So when what Jewell called “the most awesome wave” snapped their rudder, the other crews could not perceive the gravity of the situation.

“When I was getting the main down,” Jewell said, “I looked up and thought I saw Peasey looking at me. She was about 40 yards away. I tried to wave but I had too much to do.”

When Jewell was able to look up again minutes later, no other boats were in sight and the Exy J. was filling with water. Jewell tried bailing with a broken water bottle, but that was futile. Jolly tried using the spinnaker pole as a rudder, hoping to steer the boat as she would a gondola. When that failed, she grabbed a piece of driftwood to use as a paddle, but it disintegrated in her hands.

“I was completely frustrated,” Jolly said. “I don’t like not being in control.”

She thought about swimming ashore. “It was tempting,” said Jolly, a master swimmer who used to train 5 miles a day. “I had to sit on my hands to keep from doing it.” What kept her on board was sailing’s cardinal rule: Never leave your boat.

“In a survival situation, we felt confident with one another,” Jewell said. As darkness crept across the sky, they were neither “worried,” Jolly said, nor “hysterical,” according to Jewell, who was busy dealing with other emotions, including anger directed at the sailors who had left them.

“I couldn’t believe they’d do that,” she said over and over.

They learned later that Peasey never saw the main sail come down; Taylor’s crew did, but thought the Exy J. could sail in with its jib, not realizing the rudder was gone. And the others expected Ullman to be waiting at the mouth of the channel in his 60-horsepower pontoon boat to go out after the Exy J. But he wasn’t there. When the groups began splitting up earlier in the day, he had lost track of who was out and who was in, and had returned to the yacht club.

An hour later, when the other three boats sailed back through the channel and Ullman was located, it was about 4:45 p.m. Ullman left immediately to investigate. Emerging from the channel and into the open sea at dusk, he cruised up the coast about a mile but was forced to turn back because one of the pontoons was only half-filled and could not handle the heavy seas. Anyway, Jolly said, “It was instantly obvious to him that they weren’t going to see us.” Ullman would not be able to call the Coast Guard until after dark.

To keep their minds off the doomsday scenario, the women passed time by paddling with their hands. But in minutes, total darkness and heavy swells would render the boat and its occupants practically invisible, which terrified the women.

“I knew the facts of the Gulf Stream,” Jolly said, “and I knew it would take us out to sea.” She told Jewell: “We could die out here.”

Jolly, the pragmatist, kept searching for a solution. Jewell was numbed by their dilemma and kept thinking, “This is a dream.”

Then she heard a faint murmur, like the growl of a diesel engine, but all she could see was a wall of black water. Seconds later, the Exy J. finally bobbed to the top of a 10-foot swell and Jewell saw an antenna. It was about 40 yards away. A boat had just passed them by.

Commercial fisherman Mike Chebuske and his crew, Hugh Kirkwood and Luke Sweet, had spent four days at sea aboard a 41-foot, long-line trawler. They were not scheduled in until Monday, but inclement weather forced them to pull up their lines two days early. Sea conditions were so bad that Chebuske changed course from North Miami Beach to Ft. Lauderdale.

At approximately 5:30, Chebuske and Sweet were below deck and Kirkwood was on the bridge. Visibility was near zero as a mist clung to the water. Kirkwood, who wears thick glasses, was concentrating on incoming swells when he heard a shrill sound behind him on the starboard side.

Standing in water up to her knees on board the Exy J., Jewell, a pinkie in each side of her mouth, was whistling like a New Yorker flagging down a taxi and Jolly was waving the spinnaker pole. The fishing boat was now about 70 yards away, churning toward land, its crew seemingly oblivious to the desperate women, when Jewell saw Kirkwood pop his head out the side window.

“We shouldn’t have been rescued,” Jolly said. “Those fishermen weren’t supposed to be there. It was karma, or whatever you call it.”

The fishermen planned another fate for the the Exy J. They wanted to ditch it because of darkness, the increasingly dangerous weather conditions and the lateness of the hour--two of them had dates that night.

Jewell was upset--the boat wasn’t insured. But Jolly didn’t care about money at this point. “You can have my half,” she said to Jewell. To cut their losses, they stripped the boat, salvaging the electronic compass, sails and boom, but then, when “the fishermen took one look at my puppy dog face,” Jewell said, they offered to try to save the Exy J.

Which was not easy. It took an hour of work in frigid air before a satisfactory tow was rigged. During the effort, the mast broke, the bottom got scraped and a hole was put in the side, damage that made the boat unusable for the Olympic Trials. But Jolly and Jewell, warm and safe, ate fresh swordfish on board the trawler and arrived back at the yacht club about 10:30 p.m. Both were “in shock,” Jewell said.

Jewell hardly slept at all that night, and when she did manage to doze, she had fitful dreams, seeing herself wrapped in a shroud of sails. Jolly did not sleep. Haunted by the ordeal, she watched television to get her mind off the ocean and the chilling words: “The Coast Guard called off the search because of darkness.”