Authors: Rob Mundle
Two crew with broken ribs remained on board, reluctant to be lifted lest they suffer further injury. Glen Picasso was prepared to go, but then “mateship” took over. “Glen actually appeared with his life jacket and started to walk towards the stern,” said Mowbray. “He was ready to jump overboard and be lifted out. Then he stopped, looked at me, shook his head and said, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t leave you guys’. He turned, went down below again and closed the hatch.”
With three rescued crew in its belly the chopper headed for the coast some 60 miles away.
Solo Globe Challenger
then continued on its drift, the remaining crew determined to get it back to shore. Mowbray was severely fatigued but somehow mustered the energy to organise the building of a jury rig. Picasso took the helm so that Mowbray, Keith Molloy and 66-year-old Snape could go about the task. Enderby remained below because of the extent of his injuries.
The spinnaker pole became a makeshift mast, while the storm jib and trysail were hoisted to create a crude sail plan. The seas, rolling from the south west, were still too big and dangerous to take beam-on so the course was slightly east of north. The two EPIRBs remained operating, indicating the yacht was still afloat.
Conditions eased dramatically during the Monday afternoon and
Solo Globe Challenger
came onto a more favourable course towards the coast. Picasso and Enderby, despite their injuries, worked tirelessly below deck to spur life from the motor. The engine had so many problems with fuel and sediments and water that the two crewmembers slowly pulled it apart, piece by piece, examining, cleaning and repairing where necessary. Unbeknown to them, the EPIRB they believed was transmitting overnight had actually stopped, apparently because the aerial was damaged. That led SAR authorities in Canberra to fear the yacht may have sunk. A new search was established. Even local news reports in Newcastle suggested they might have joined the race’s list of fatalities.
Soon after sun-up an Air Force Orion roared overhead and circled low, the flight crew trying to identify the yacht. They then despatched smoke flares to check the wind speed and direction before dropping an emergency container into the ocean just ahead of them. It contained satchels of fresh water and a hand-held VHF. The remaining crewmembers aboard
Solo Globe Challenger
made contact with the 26-year-old captain, Paul Carpenter, who informed them HMAS
Newcastle
was about 36 miles away and heading their way.
HMAS
Newcastle
had spent most of the night searching for
Solo Globe Challenger
and the crew were extremely concerned because they knew that the yacht’s EPIRB had stopped transmitting. Commander Steve Hamilton called on a special effort from all available on his undermanned ship to scan the ocean as they went into a search pattern 100 miles off the coast.
“We knew that the satellites had lost contact with the
EPIRB on their passes so we were becoming more and more determined to find the yacht,” recalls Hamilton. “We were frustrated by the fact that the seas were still around 25 foot; big enough to hide the yacht from our eyes and our radar. We based the search around their last known position, not realising that they had set a jury rig and were making ground north. Soon after daylight an Orion flew overhead and told us they had spotted the yacht 30 miles to the north.”
Surmising the Navy would want to take him and Enderby off, Picasso doubled his efforts to start the motor and give Mowbray and the two remaining crew a better chance of reaching the coast. Only minutes before HMAS
Newcastle
appeared on the horizon to the south the motor roared back to life.
“We had the hand-held VHF radio turned on,” Mowbray recalls. “The next thing words burst from it that I’ll never forget. ‘
Solo Globe Challenger
, this is the warship
Newcastle
’. I thought, you beauty, if these bastards can’t save us, who will? The ship came close to us and slowed. Then they sent two people – a male and a female – over to us in an inflatable boat. They came alongside and the young guy who was controlling the inflatable said, ‘Good morning Sir’ and I said, ‘Good morning to you too’.”
“‘I’m instructed to remove all personnel from the vessel.’
“Look old mate, thanks very much for coming but I really don’t want to leave my boat.”
‘Oh, hang on a minute.’
“He had a bit of a chat into his mouthpiece, obviously talking to the skipper, then came back and asked ‘What would you like to do?’
“Well, we’ve got two injured people here. We’d like to
remove them if we may.”
“That’s fine.”
Picasso and Enderby stepped gingerly into the inflatable and were whisked back to the ship. They were helped aboard and taken to the ship’s small but impressive medical centre where the doctor went about treating them. As HMAS
Newcastle
moved away and turned towards Sydney,
Solo Globe Challenger
was making about five knots – using its jury rig and motor – towards Ulladulla. As it disappeared,
Newcastle
advised that a fishing trawler had been sent out by an insurance company to tow the yacht into Eden.
At 4.30am the next morning
Solo Globe Challenger
arrived in Eden at the end of a towline. Tony Mowbray still had his yacht and, possibly, his dream to sail non-stop around the world.
“I think it’s a bit like childbirth for a woman. You tend to forget the hard parts and want to go again. There is one thing though I certainly won’t forget after going from heaven to hell and back. I’m not the sort of person who goes to sea undercooked – I’m always prepared for the worst – or at least I thought I was. Before this I thought I knew where the top rung of the ladder was; now I know it’s about 50 per cent higher.”
F
or a six-hour period on December 27 the north-east corner of Bass Strait was a hellish place to be. Many of the 115 yachts had been forced to retire through damage, injury to crew or seasickness. Some crews chose to apply “prudent seamanship” and withdraw from the race while others sought shelter in safe havens until the storm had passed. A tiny minority, through desire or circumstance, continued racing towards Hobart.
Two yachts that the
Winston Churchill
crew were most keen to beat, Don Mickleborough’s
Southerly
and Ian Kiernan’s
Canon Maris
, were among the retirees late that afternoon. Two other very seaworthy racers, Hugh Treharne’s
Bright Morning Star
and Stephen Ainsworth’s
Loki
, soon joined them.
Southerly
retired because of what, in hindsight, might have been a fortunate mistake. Mickleborough and his crew were unaware they were around 48 miles from Eden when they decided their race was run. Had they known they were that far south they may have continued deeper into the mayhem in Bass Strait.
Hugh Treharne had been aboard the Australian yacht
Impetuous
in the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race and ruefully
remembers the conditions back then. “The Fastnet was like being in the fridge compared to this one. When a big wave poured over the top of
Bright Morning Star
[in the Sydney to Hobart] it was like being in a warm bath. The exposure to hypothermia over in England was much worse and that’s why they lost so many people. The conditions – the wind and waves – were very similar though. The only real difference was that in Bass Strait the seas were a lot more confused. My technique was to sail fast enough so I could poke the bow up into the waves and then through them. We were sailing with a deep reef in the main and no jib. The options were to run away with it and set either the trysail or storm jib or retire and go back to Eden under motor.
“While I was trying to make up my mind this huge wave arrived. I was looking a long way up at its crest, like I had to stretch my neck. There was a lot of white water, a real lot of white water coming at me, and the wave just kept getting steeper and steeper. I braced myself by grabbing the wheel and leaning over it. There was nothing I could do to try to beat it. The moment it hit the yacht was knocked over to 90 degrees with the mast in the water. I couldn’t see for quite a few seconds. I was under green water. It wasn’t just spray or a splash, it was hugely green. The water filled the mainsail and held the yacht down; it could have been 40-feet deep for all I know.”
By the time
Bright Morning Star
righted, three crew in the cabin had suffered broken ribs. Treharne’s brother, Ian, rushed on deck and worked with him to lower the mainsail. The engine was started. Eden would be
Bright Morning Star
’s new destination.
Michael “Zapper” Bell was one of three crewmembers on deck on Stephen Ainsworth’s Swan 44,
Loki.
They
were about 70 miles offshore and sailing under a storm jib when the wind instrument hit a staggering 74 knots. A rogue wave of titanic proportions loomed out of nowhere and began to break above
Loki.
The yacht headed up the vertical wall of water and was then tossed back, landing upside down.
“What followed was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had at sea. There I was, underneath this upturned yacht in the most incredibly serene situation. I could have been swimming in the fishpond at home. In fact it was like swimming in the Caribbean – clear and warm. Everything was still and beautiful,” he recalls. “I saw my glasses get washed off my face and had time to simply reach out and grab them. I remember all the coloured halyard tails and lines just wafting through the water like sea snakes. I was amazed that I felt no panic. I knew I had to release my safety harness at my chest to get out. There was no gasping for breath or panic, just deliberate movements to escape. Then, all of a sudden, the yacht righted itself with the rig and everything intact. All hell broke loose again. We were back into the real world. Not surprisingly we decided that that was enough. We set a sea anchor and ran under bare poles still doing seven knots. Some of the crew wanted us to head towards Eden – 70 miles upwind. ‘Bugger that,’ I said. ‘We’re heading for New Zealand. It might be 1200 miles away but I know I can catch a jet back to Australia from there. We are not going upwind in this’.”
Eventually, when the wind died and sea conditions improved,
Loki
made it back to port at Narooma, south of Sydney.
Initially, there was a bit of father-and-son rivalry adding spice to the battle between
Canon Maris
and
Winston Churchill.
John Gibson, 65, was aboard
Winston
Churchill
, while his son, Jonathan, 31, was with Ian Kiernan. By the time the two yachts had entered Bass Strait and were being pounded by the storm all competitive rivalries began to dissolve.
Kiernan was reluctant to retire at first and was confident the yacht was performing well. The wind direction was causing him some consternation however – it was going to the west while the southern ocean was trying to squeeze through Bass Strait against a very strong current racing south. It was a deadly combination. Kiernan was standing in the companionway when a huge 30-foot plus wave came over and swept the spray dodger right off the boat. He wasn’t prepared to sit still and watch his yacht be demolished nor risk the safety of his crewmates so he made the difficult decision to retire. They were then approximately 60 miles from Eden but thought they’d head for a port farther to the north – Ulladulla or even Sydney. It was around 6.10pm and they set the spitfire jib, selected the new course and began to extricate themselves from the worst of the storm.
They had heard
Winston Churchill
’s mayday but did not know the details. “When I heard Lew Carter mention over the radio that a search was underway and that there was no EPIRB signal I started to think the yacht had gone down and taken the raft and all the crew with it,” recalls Kiernan. “I couldn’t say that though. We had to keep a very positive attitude – a very stiff upper lip – for Gibbo’s sake. He was hearing the reports come through and while he appeared stoic about it all he was very, very concerned. We were saying to him, ‘Your Dad will be alright mate. They’ll be OK. They’ll be OK’. But in my heart of hearts I was already thinking they were all dead.”
While race yachts continued to battle their way across Bass Strait and on towards Hobart the nine sailors crammed into the two
Winston Churchill
liferafts began their own battle to survive what would be a traumatic night. In the four-man raft with Richard Winning and Bruce Gould were 19-year-old Hobart race novice Michael Rynan and Paul Lumtin. In the other raft with Stanley, Lawler and Gibson were Mike Bannister and John Dean. Winning’s raft carried the one EPIRB the yacht was required to have for the race. There was a small lifeline between the two rafts which soon broke. Stanley’s raft possessed a drogue which was set to slow the rate of drift but as it was let out it became tangled. Suddenly it took up and John Gibson tried valiantly to hang on to it but the thin line tore through his fingers, cutting them to the bone.
“I felt an immediate numbing effect,” he recalls. “I knew straight away I’d done some severe damage. The fingers were bleeding but I wasn’t concerned that I was losing a significant amount of blood. There wasn’t anything that we had to wrap them so I just left the wounds open and reckoned that salt water was the way to go.”
The drogue was eventually set but lasted only 15 minutes; the acceleration of the raft down the waves was too much for it and it broke free. “Suddenly a big wave hit us and lifted my side of the raft,” recalls Stanley. “The problem was that my body went up but my feet were still pinned under the other guy’s legs. That was when I broke my ankle. I could do nothing more than say, ‘Oh my God, my ankle’s broken. That’s not very good’. That then meant both Gibbo and I were out of play.”
Unknown to Stanley, he had also torn tendons around both his artificial hips.
As with the other raft, the drogue attached to Winning’s raft parted only minutes after they had abandoned
Winston Churchill.
The four crewmembers decided their first job was to repair the “tent flap” on the canopy so they would be better protected from the elements. It was still pouring with rain and the 70-knot westerly showed no signs of easing. With the flap fixed they then rummaged through the raft’s ration pack. It was like a show bag at a fair and contained a small amount of very basic food, water, medical supplies and other rescue and survival support equipment – an emergency pump for the raft, a knife, flares and a reflector mirror to attract attention.
Young Endeavour
was on its way to the rescue area. It had been a nightmarish passage dead downwind. On no less than three occasions the massive brigantine skipped uncontrollably down the waves like a dinghy, and at one stage the pressure of water coming across the port side of the ship cracked the plate glass – an inch thick – in a steel-encased porthole. Most of the crewmembers were sick and Audrey Brown had been hit by a flying object. Visibility on deck was down to a measly 100 metres. They reported back to AMSA that there was no sign of
Winston Churchill.
Back on Bruce Gould’s raft the seas were providing little relief. Around dusk they were flipped upside down. They tried to undo the tent flap but couldn’t because it was tied up with some nylon rope. The only choice was to cut their way out. After doing this, Winning took off his life jacket and swam to the surface. There was nothing to tether him with so he just dived out and hung on. He grabbed onto a righting line and, with the help of the wind, managed to flick the raft back upright. He was
quickly pulled back in. During the capsize, the aerial on the EPIRB had broken in half, but despite the conditions and the constant setbacks, morale remained high.
Around midnight yet another massive wave broke around the raft, capsizing it again. The raft was righted but towards dawn the lower of the two chambers began to deflate. They were worried that once the bottom chamber deflated, the canopy would start collapsing as well. They consulted the instructions on how to inflate the raft manually but the adaptor they needed had been lost during one of the roll-overs. They had to improvise and pulled a nylon piece out of the end of the pump hose and managed to jam that into the valve and tape it up. It worked. The raft continued to be hurled, tossed and tumbled, but fortunately for the four tightly-packed occupants it remained upright. As if they hadn’t been through enough already, a five-centimetre slit had appeared in the floor. They were soon sitting in something akin to a toddler’s wading pool.
“We don’t know what caused the hole,” recalls Gould, “it might have been the gas inflation bottle that was hanging off the raft or the broken aerial of the EPIRB. We couldn’t find a bailer so we decided it was best to jam a sponge in the hole. We had no bailer and 16 sponges. Fat lot of good they were – we ended up having between six inches (15 centimetres) and two feet (60 centimetres) of water in with us for the rest of the time. The level depended on how big the wave was that broke over us. After a while someone said, ‘Hey, here’s the bloody raft repair kit’. We ripped it open and read the instructions – ‘rough the rubber surface; make sure it’s clean and dry and apply the patch’. We chucked the repair kit out of the raft.”
They worked out the best bailing method involved using their seaboots and a plastic bag. One of the crewmembers had grabbed a
Winston Churchill
T-shirt as
they were abandoning ship. The presence of the T-shirt brought another form of relief for the survivors – a hint of humour. All four debated whether the shirt from a yacht that was now sunk was bringing good luck or bad. It was decided, in a bid to appease the weather Gods, that the shirt should be consigned to the deep. It too was thrown from the raft.
The five crewmembers in the other raft were in even graver danger. They were lying across the floor of the square raft in sardine-like formation, all the time being hurled about by the violent seas. “No one seemed worried,” recalls Gibson. “The spirit in the raft was excellent. We were very concerned about John’s obvious distress; not that he was complaining. Every now and then, when we were thrown around, there were significant exclamations – totally involuntary moans like ‘Oh Christ’. We were trying to make him as comfortable as we could and keep away from his legs. We went through the bag of goodies we found and discussed some of the stuff that was in there. We found some fishing hooks and I recall there were some jokes about what we were going to use for bait. Deanie and I were also saying how nice it would be to have some Scotch to mix with the water that was in the little plastic vials.” With nightfall came the realisation that rescue was highly unlikely before the next day. The waves continued to buffet the raft relentlessly, and then the inevitable happened – a monster wave flipped it upside down. They finished up standing on the inflated arch that was built into the raft to support the canopy. What was previously the raft floor was now the roof.
“We felt surprisingly comfortable but we knew we were going to run out of oxygen,” recalls Stanley. “You could just feel the air starting to get a bit tighter. Jim
Lawler was next to the opening. He wanted to take his vest off to get out and do something about getting us upright. But it was just raging outside. We all decided it was too dangerous to get out one by one to turn the thing up. It would have taken just one bad sea when someone was getting out for us to lose them.”
“It was a very calm discussion for about 20 minutes,” recalls Gibson. “Certainly the comment was, ‘Well, the damn thing’s a lot more stable this way up than it is the other way’. It was certainly a lot quieter. Michael said words to the effect, ‘We’ve got to get out and right this thing otherwise we’re going to be in terrible trouble’. I recall saying to him, and my words are indelibly etched in my mind, ‘Michael, it’s death out there’. When I said it I thought to myself, ‘Christ that’s a very dramatic thing to say; that’s overstating the issue a bit.’ But I really was very concerned about it because it was pitch black and there were very, very large waves coming through. Anyone outside would struggle to hang on to anything.”