High Drama on the High Seas

Don’t tell Long Beach sailor Keith Kilpatrick, a self-styled Southern Ocean “greenhorn,” he could have picked a better spot to be stricken with a disabling stomach ailment than in the middle of one of the least hospitable places on the planet.

He knew that a couple of weeks ago as he prepared to leave Cape Town, South Africa, on the second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race along the bottom of the world.

Wednesday, as the 64-foot boat Amer Sports One slashed through winds up to 30 knots and temperatures just above freezing, Kilpatrick lay ailing in his bunk receiving antibiotics, morphine and a saline drip.

His wife Tara planned to fly tonight to Perth, Western Australia.

Should it be necessary to take her husband off the boat before it reaches the end of the leg at Sydney on the far side of the island continent, the nearest landfall would be Eclipse Island off the southwest corner of Australia--still more than 1,000 miles away, with an ETA of sometime Sunday.

“He’s sick but he’s in stable condition,” Tara Kilpatrick said from their Long Beach home. Amer Sports One, trailing the leg leaders by 170 nautical miles, was far out of normal shipping lanes and 155 miles from the nearest competitor.

“They are out of range of a rescue, but he isn’t in need of an immediate rescue,” Tara Kilpatrick said. “Our team has made me feel really good. I’m comfortable with the situation. I don’t tend to be a hysterical person.”

Kilpatrick, 40, was fortunate to have the veteran Roger Nilson on his boat.

Nilson, who doubles as navigator, is the only bona fide medical doctor in the eight-boat fleet. Medicines were running low, but the Australian Search and Rescue Authority was planning to air-drop supplies later Wednesday.

Tara Kilpatrick said she was especially reassured after talking to her husband early Wednesday morning by satellite phone from the boat.

“There aren’t many satellites down there so it was a really bad

connection,” she said. “They couldn’t hear me but I could hear them crystal clear. I talked to Roger [Nilson] first and then he put Keith on. He said, ‘I’m OK. I’m in a little bit of pain.”’

The exact nature of Kilpatrick’s illness wasn’t disclosed, but apparently it wasn’t appendicitis or anything that was immediately life threatening.

The problem surfaced Tuesday when a daily report from the boat noted that “one crew member has stomach trouble,” without identifying the individual.

The same report told of “wind just below 30 knots” and a water temperature of 39 degrees.

Kilpatrick, who owns the Left Coast Rigging sailboat business in Seal Beach, is an ocean-racing veteran who has logged eight Transpacs to Hawaii, about a dozen races to Mexico and two from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro.

But he said before leaving Cape Town Nov. 11: “I have a lot of trepidation. I’m going into the Southern Ocean as a humble greenhorn. I’m looking forward to it. On the other hand, bad things happen down there. It’s gonna be cold and it’s gonna be nasty, and to say I’m not worried about it would be a lie.”

The race headquarters in Southampton, England, was monitoring the situation, and Kilpatrick’s personal physician, Hartley Turpin of Newport Beach, was also in touch.

“He said they were doing everything on the boat that they could do on shore,” Tara Kilpatrick said.

Amer Sports One has a veteran crew.

Grant Dalton, the skipper, is doing his seventh circumnavigation race, and the rest of the 12-man crew is composed of professional sailors from eight nations and includes another American, Dee Smith of Novato, Calif.

The boat placed second behind Germany’s illbruck on the first leg from England to Cape Town but has been struggling in sixth.