Sea Leveled

Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, marks the start of the Sydney-to-Hobart race, a 54-year Southern Hemisphere sailing tradition.

Publicity for the most recent race noted that the 42-foot Miintinta last sailed it in 1978 and that “current owner Brian Emerson . . . is looking forward to a comfortable ride to Hobart with plenty of baked dinners and chilled wine to make the going that little bit easier.”

As 115 boats lined up in Sydney Harbor to race 630 nautical miles to the Australian island of Tasmania, no one imagined the horror that lay ahead.

Six sailors would die. Fifty-five would be saved from a thrashing sea. Many would suffer broken bones, hypothermia and other trauma.

Only 43 boats would reach Hobart. Forty would take shelter in the small working port of Eden and other coastal havens. Some would ride out the storm. Seven would be abandoned. Three would sink, Miintinta among them.

As sailing disasters go, it was second only to Britain’s 1979 Fastnet race, in which 15 competitors perished. It would have been far worse if the course hadn’t run so near land, within reach of land-based rescue operations.

Operating in the same extreme conditions that produced wave troughs deep enough to hide townhouses and winds gusting to perhaps 80 knots--92 mph--the Australian Maritime Safety Authority dispatched 39 airplanes, six helicopters and three rescue vessels in a heroic effort joined by several unofficial tugs and fishing boats from Eden.

The confidence of experienced seamen was shaken and, in a few cases, shattered.

Mark Rudiger of San Francisco has sailed many rough ocean races.

“It was all you could do to hang on,” he said.

Rudiger was aboard the 79-foot Sayonara owned by Oracle software tycoon Larry Ellison, which was first to finish but took a beating.

Phil Kieley, head of Oracle’s Sydney office, broke an ankle.

“I was hurled through the air when we came off one wave and my ankle became trapped as I went,” Kieley said. “When I looked down I thought my seaboot had come off because it was hanging out sideways. Then I realized my foot was still in it.”

Kieley’s broken ankle will heal. Steve Kulmar’s battered psyche may not.

Kulmar, the helmsman on Sword of Orion, is haunted by the helplessness he felt watching his friend, English Olympic sailor Glyn Charles, drift out of sight after the boat had rolled 360 degrees. Kulmar had invited Charles along.

“I will never do another Hobart race,” Kulmar said.

Did the sailors know what they were getting into? And, if they did, should the race have been delayed or the fleet recalled? Those were key questions as the Cruising Club of Australia launched an extraordinary review.

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Rob Matthews, crewman aboard Bruce Guy’s 40-foot Business Post Naiad, which rolled and trapped him and Phil Skeggs underwater in their lifelines:

“I had nearly run out of breath when the boat was lifted by another wave and I just sucked enough air to keep me going for another 10 or 15 seconds, and I forced the harness off. I popped to the surface and hung onto the ropes at the stern. I am the luckiest man alive.”

Steve Walker, trapped inside the cabin upside down, said, “We heard Rob calling for Phil. We didn’t hear Phil answer and couldn’t do anything. Then another huge wave righted the boat, leaving about a meter of water below decks.

“Bruce [Guy] was beside the main hatchway. As he tried to get up he had a [heart] seizure and died in my arms.”

Guy was 51. Skeggs, 34, was found on deck, drowned.

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Aboard Sayonara at the start, conditions looked ideal for a record run.

“It was a fair-weather start and [downwind] run down the coast,” Rudiger said.

But most of the veterans weren’t fooled. The Sydney-Hobart is known for rough conditions, especially in the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia where a southerly current running down the Australian coast collides with a stronger current.

“Bass Strait is notoriously bad because it’s shallow, and the winds, particularly from the west, will follow through there quite aggressively,” Rudiger said.

Exactly 1 hour 14 minutes after the 1 o’clock start on Saturday, Dec. 26, most of the fleet had yet to clear the harbor when Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology issued an updated forecast, warning of winds increasing late Sunday afternoon to 45-55 knots and seas of one-two meters rising to three-four meters. The forecast was available to any boat monitoring its radio.

“Sunday afternoon and evening was when the damage was done,” said Patrick Sullivan, BOM regional director in Sydney.

Winds above 63 knots qualify as a hurricane and two boats reported gusts up to 78 knots, but it would seem the racers had ample notice on what to expect.

“That’s what warnings are about,” Sullivan said.

So why didn’t the organizers wait to start the race? Or call the racers back after the storm warning went out?

Because, traditionalists say, the ultimate responsibility lies with each boat, a credo based on Fundamental Rule 4 of the International Racing Rules of Sailing: “A boat is solely responsible for deciding whether or not to start . . . or to continue racing.”

Some insist that’s a cop-out for race committees.

Others say the committee acted appropriately.

Ken Morrison, an internationally known racing judge from Hawaii who served on the Sydney-Hobart panel, said, “I can assure you that there would still be a group of independent Australian yachtsmen who would set out at 1300 [1 p.m.] on every Boxing Day from Sydney to Hobart, with or without the sanction of any official body.

” . . . Rule 4 was not written to ‘protect’ race organizers. It was written to recognize that sailors are an independent lot and will do just what they please and when they please, when it comes to sailing into the face of danger offshore. Therefore it is an inherent law of the sea and a racing rule of sailing that the captain is responsible for the safety of his vessel and crew.”

Rudiger said, “I can’t blame anybody. They did warn us early on in the race. We were warned before we got there.”

A few paid heed, among them Ian Kiernan, who turned back to Sydney.

“It would seem he based his decision on our warning,” Sullivan said.

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Richard Winning, skipper of the Winston Churchill, a 55-foot, 56-year-old cutter:

“A big wave broke right over the deck and rolled us over. I was steering and John Dean was on deck with me. We were both thrown into the water and when the yacht came upright, we were tangled in the rigging. John Stanley came up on deck and dragged us back aboard.

“We thought that everything was OK, but minutes later we realized the yacht was taking on water at a rapid rate.”

The crew of nine abandoned ship in two inflatable life rafts. After more than a day in the water, four were rescued from one raft.

“The worst part was during the night when we could hear the big waves coming at us but couldn’t see them,” Winning said.

“Twice the raft was capsized by a huge wave. Each time someone had to swim outside, climb up on top of it and right it. Once it was back upright, we could only sit there in the darkness and hope it wouldn’t happen again.”

After dark the other raft was found, but with only two of its occupants. Dean, Mike Bannister and John Lawler were gone. Later, the bodies of Bannister and Lawler were found. Dean’s was not.

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Race organizers check boats for equipment and seaworthiness and require that half the crew must have done a previous Sydney-Hobart. They figure to somehow tighten the rules now--politically, they have to do something--and one area might be in the quality of the life rafts, and when to deploy them. Of the boats abandoned, only the Winston Churchill, Sword of Orion and Miintinta sank.

Brian Emerson, owner of Miintinta, complained that his vessel’s bilge pumps--they pump seawater from inside the boat--failed. But his life rafts apparently worked.

Winston Churchill’s were less than satisfactory. Stanley said the raft he was on capsized more than 30 times during the ordeal.

The four crews that abandoned their boats might have been at less risk not taking to the 68-degree water in flimsy rafts. Considering that boats usually are rolled or capsized more by wave action than wind, in such conditions a tiny inflatable raft would seem an option of last resort.

On the other hand, many of the 49 sailors winched up into helicopters first had to jump into the sea to get away from the boat so the winch line wouldn’t get tangled in the rigging.

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Sword of Orion had already quit the race and turned toward Eden when disaster struck. Australian sailing reporter Rob Mundle gave this account to the sailing newsletter Grand Prix Sailor:

“[Sword of Orion] was rolled 360 degrees by a breaking wave estimated to be about 10 meters high. When it righted itself, [Glyn] Charles had gone overboard. [Steve] Kulmar and the rest of the crew responded to the call of ‘Man overboard!’ Everything was done to get lifesaving equipment to Charles. He was too far away and it was too rough and life-threatening for anyone to try to swim to him.

“Crew begged him to swim harder as the crippled yacht drifted away. He appeared to be swimming with one arm. Twenty minutes had passed when they finally lost sight of him on a distant wave.

“Their attention turned to saving the yacht. Frightened men with buckets bailed frantically from below while others cut away the rig. The yacht was kept afloat until a rescue helicopter arrived that night. Each crewman had to leap into the water and wait for the helicopter harness to be dragged to him.

“Three times Kulmar missed getting completely into the sling and three times he dropped back into the water. The third time he fell, he dislocated his shoulder. A rescuer was lowered from the helicopter and he was captured.

“ ‘As I was being lifted from the water I just remember looking up and seeing this brilliant white light above me,’ Kulmar recalled. ‘I genuinely didn’t know if I was alive or dead.’ ”

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Were boats that weren’t swamped just lucky? Skipper Ed Psaltis of AFR Midnight Rambler, a 35-footer and the smallest boat in a decade to win on handicap time, wasn’t sure.

“If there was an element of luck, then it was that we got the worst of the weather during the daylight hours,” he said. “We could see the most dangerous of the waves coming at us and because of that we had the best possible opportunity of getting the yacht over them. If it had been dark it might have been a different story.”

There are so many variables in any ocean race that nobody will ever know exactly what went wrong. Virtually to a man, the sailors said they were caught off guard by the storm’s intensity.

“It’s just the nature of the beast,” Rudiger said. “You’re out there at the mercy of Mother Nature. . . . “

“It was the quickness with which the system built up. The barometer dropped from 1,008 down to 984 in four to five hours . . . one of the steepest drops I’ve seen, ever. We knew we were in for some weather.”