Authors: Rob Mundle
The five were standing in waist-deep water in pitch-blackness. Torches were produced and an inspection of their upside-down world began.
“It was definitely safer being the way we were so we decided to cut a small hole in the raft floor – which was now our roof – so we could breathe,” explained Stanley. “There was a handle on the floor that had reinforcing either side of it. We slit it longitudinally, four inches (10 centimetres). To do it the other way would have been better, but it would have been only two inches, and that wouldn’t have let in enough air. When we made the cut the raft submerged about another inch in the water. That didn’t matter. At least we had enough air to breathe.”
They were “comfortable and quite happy” being upside down while their new “roof” was pushed up and down like a giant rubber bellow to circulate air into the
raft. They drifted along for what they believed were a few hours until another rogue wave could be heard roaring towards them. It was like being trapped in a railway tunnel with a locomotive coming at you without a light. The wave thundered in, picked up the raft like a beach ball and threw it back upright. Bodies spilled everywhere and crashed on top of each other, then the wave was gone. A headcount was done immediately. Everyone was present.
Throughout the night the raft was rolled, tumbled and turned some 30 times by the marauding waves. The floor had started to split where the cut had been made and was widening as they watched. On top of this, the canopy was shredding. They finished up hanging onto the inside rails of the raft and when the top canopy became fully shredded they put their hands on the outside and hung onto the rails. Gibson had been in full sailing gear when he left the yacht (including his seaboots and complete harness) and had attached his safety harness to the roof arch. Others were wearing cumbersome life vests around their necks. Seasickness had thus far spared all five crewmembers.
Some time in the very early hours of December 28 the mother of all waves arrived.
“Normally we had some warning, we could hear them coming like breaking surf,” recalls Stanley. “But this almighty wave gave no warning. Suddenly the five of us were just crashing. The raft was hurled from its crest and was tumbling down its foaming face, 40, 50, 60 feet. I could only think about hanging on. I wrapped my arms around the roof frame and just hung on and held my breath until the wave went away. I knew that if I didn’t hang on I was going to die. God knows how long it went on for, but it was for some time. When we finally stopped and I came up for air I was still hanging onto the roof
frame but was on the outside of the raft. I yelled out ‘Who’s here?’ The only reply came from Gibbo.”
Stanley looked back to see a wide white veil of water that stretched for some 350 metres. Amid the turbulence, a considerable distance away, he could see two people.
“I’m not sure who they were,” he said, his voice loaded with emotion. “All I could do then was dive underneath the raft and get back up inside so I could grab the roof frame again and hang on. I said to Gibbo, ‘Mate, we’re by ourselves here. We can’t do anything for those boys. The wind is going to blow us faster than they can swim and we can’t go back’. We can only hope that they can hang on till daybreak and be spotted by a search plane.”
John Gibson has vivid memories of his experiences that night. “What talk there had been during the night was very positive but at that stage everybody was semi snoozing,” he recalls. “We were just floating around and hanging on. My next recollection was my harness being taken up sharply, then all hell broke loose. I went on what I can only describe as the most extraordinary ride of my life. I was obviously in white water and travelling at great speed with a huge sensation of sound. I was just being dragged by my harness at terrific speed through white water and being hurled all over the place. Whatever handhold I had had gone and my body was being spun in all directions. I don’t recall that I was scared. I just recall thinking, this is the most extraordinary experience. I don’t recall that I had a problem with breathing. I don’t recall panicking. I just recall this experience went on and on and on and on and on and I just couldn’t believe it.
“I just went with it. I didn’t fight it. It went on for a long time, a remarkably long time. There was also a sense of falling, I knew I was falling. I knew I was in fast water. I knew I was in white water yet I didn’t feel I was going
to drown. I just didn’t know what was going to happen. I was just trying to somehow or other go with it, not fight it and at the same time just try and work out what the hell was going to happen next, but at no stage did I have the thought that I was going to die. Then it all stopped. It just stopped. It just stopped and it was dark. There was white water all around me and the raft was still. There wasn’t a sound. I looked around and there was no one there. I heard a voice. It was from outside the raft. It was John. He said, ‘Who’s here?’. I said, ‘It’s Gibbo’. He popped up inside the raft. He’d obviously been flicked outside the raft but had obviously hung on. How he did it I don’t know.
“We turned around and tried to see what was happening. I thought I’d lost both my contact lenses at that stage and my visibility was restricted. I was aware of white water but on recollection I still must have had my right lens in because I was able to see a strobe light come on. I knew exactly who it was – Jim Lawler – because he was the only person that had one. I had one as well so I activated mine and held it up. I thought, well, he can see that I’m still alive, but he was a long way back. Then I heard voices. I couldn’t tell you what they were saying but I assume I might have heard words to the effect of ‘Where are you?’ or ‘Who’s there?’…something like that. I’m sure I heard ‘Who’s there?’ or ‘Where are you Mike?’ I don’t recall exactly. They were human voices in the dark, in the white water further back.”
Through a miracle, divine intervention, or sheer guts and determination, Stanley and Gibson somehow continued to defy the odds that night and hang on. Stanley said they were rolled at least five more times before daybreak.
The conditions the two rafts were experiencing by mid-morning on December 28 were horrifying. But, after having battled through such meteorological malevolence overnight, the scene was starting to improve for the
Winston Churchill
survivors. Bruce Gould remembers the winds easing to around 30 knots and moving around to the sou’west, and while the waves were still huge, and breaking regularly, they too had decreased in size. Inflating the raft and bailing out the water kept them amused during a fairly uneventful day. Most of the time it was Winning who was sitting at the small entrance to the raft canopy scouring the skies for any sign of a search aircraft. “I kept seeing ships and submarines and hearing aircraft all day. I wasn’t hallucinating. I think it was just wishful thinking.”
At around 3pm they heard, then spotted, a plane. By the time a flare was found, unwrapped and lit, the plane had gone. The already frustrated raft occupants could only watch as the plane disappeared towards the horizon. Then, about 20 minutes later, it reappeared. It was flying a planned search grid. The red phosphorescent flare, Gould and Winning’s last, rocketed towards the grey sky. Anxious seconds passed as eyes desperately watched for any sign that it had been seen. The twin-engine plane, an AusSAR civilian search aircraft, began a gentle turn that gradually became more and more positive. It was turning back. But it didn’t come to them. It kept circling, going around their position twice.
Unbeknown to the survivors in the water the plane spotters were frantically trying to locate the source of the flare. It was a small black spot with a tinge of orange somewhere on the surface of the wild ocean a few hundred feet below. Eyes strained in the aircraft, then there it was. A liferaft. Thumbs went up and the aircraft was turned for an approach. It radioed AusSAR with a
message that wives, families, fellow sailors, and the media across Australia had hoped to hear for nearly 24 hours. A liferaft with occupants had been sighted some 80 miles off the coast. About 20 minutes after the plane spotted them the four survivors heard “the sweetest sound you could ever want to hear – a bloody big chopper coming at us.”
If rescuing people equalled a good day at the office, paramedic Cam Robertson and the rest of the team aboard the Helimed 1 chopper out of La Trobe were going gangbusters. They had already found
Solo Globe Challenger
that morning and had successfully completed the mission. Since then they had been assigned to searching and identifying some of the many EPIRBs that were still transmitting. By mid-afternoon it seemed things were quietening down, until AusSAR contacted them and asked that they investigate a flare from a one-man liferaft that had been sighted about 80 miles offshore. Pilot Stef Sincich acknowledged the request and turned the powerful red and white chopper towards the target.
“We located it without a problem,” said Robertson. “We looked at the raft and discussed the fact that it wasn’t a one-man raft, it was bigger, but we still didn’t know where it had come from or who might be aboard. The guys winched me down and I finned over to the raft and stuck my head in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were four blokes inside, and they were very pleased to see me. The noise of the chopper was very loud so I yelled out and asked if there were any injuries. They all seemed OK. I told the guy closest to the door – it turned out to be Richard Winning – that I’d take him out first. I asked him if he was happy to get in the water so I could get the strop around him and he said he was. I told the other
guys to collapse the canopy and get on top of it so the raft would be more stable if it got into the downwash from the chopper.”
“Everything went really smoothly,” recalls Robertson. “Just as we got clear of the water I yelled across to my first guy, asking if he was OK. He was. I also asked what yacht they were from and he said
Winston Churchill.
I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked. It was a very special moment for me because a lot of people involved in the search were thinking
Winston Churchill
was lost and it was very doubtful that we would find any survivors. In no time at all we had all four in the chopper. I have to say it was a great feeling to know that we had got those guys. Sometimes you think it’s a privilege to rescue people and that time it really was.”
“It wasn’t until we were up in the helicopter and could look down at the sea that we really appreciated what we’d been through,” recalls Gould. “It was just a white mass of waves. It was an absolute shemozzle. We also realised how hard it had been for the poor guys in the search aircraft to find us.”
The four survivors inquired as to the safety of their five other crewmates. They were told they hadn’t been found – news that concerned them. At the same time the fact that they themselves had survived meant that the others must be safe and still in a raft somewhere nearby.
John “Steamer” Stanley and John Gibson had hoped to see search aircraft during the morning of the 28th. Their raft had disintegrated to a stage where it was little more than a black ring drifting on a savage black ocean. Many hours had passed since the yacht sank so the search area was now huge; and the cloud base was so low that visibility was little more than a few kilometres at the very
best. Also, during their numerous capsizes, flares and other emergency equipment had been lost. In their estimation, they must have been at least 50 miles from where the yacht had sunk. As the day dragged on they began to think it was almost impossible that the other three crewmembers had survived. They were still hopeful of being rescued and knew there was an EPIRB in the other raft which would have been alerting the searchers. What they didn’t know was that the aerial was broken and the device wasn’t transmitting correctly.
“We were at the situation where we had to do something about staying with the raft because what we were left with was a ring,” recalls Gibson. “If you leant on any one section of the ring it would submerge and the whole thing would flip over. We always had to be very careful about what we were doing. We had to work out a system whereby we could control what was happening, bearing in mind that John had very restricted mobility. The raft had lost all its shape. It seemed to take whatever shape it wanted. You couldn’t put your foot from one side to the other. We worked out that if we positioned ourselves opposite each other, and John put his good foot in my crotch and pushed against me, we could then move our shoulders sort of above the wall of the raft and lock ourselves in. We were parallel to the arch so we could also hang on to that for support. Our bodies gave us some buoyancy with our backs pushed against the rubber. We took that position in the early hours of the morning and held it until we were pulled out at 11 o’clock that night.
“All I can say about the arrangement is that John now owes me a few beers because he got the good end of the deal. His foot was wedged hard against my balls and I can tell you that when it was all over the whole of my crotch was black. My balls were up underneath my eyes. We
were hallucinating all the time. I remember thinking there was definitely a section of the raft that had a soft floor and that I could walk round and put my feet on it. Then I hallucinated about a solid floor. There was a corridor that I went down and I could simply just stand there. It was the most blissful feeling. We both saw buckets of ships and sailing boats; cutters and schooners. I went past millions of them.
“John told me exactly the same. There were vessels with lights on that went past us. I also spent lots of time with some of the lovely things in my life, particularly on the romantic side. I revisited all the beautiful people of the opposite sex I’ve known. I spent hours with them. It was a lot of fun and certainly helped pass the time, I won’t elaborate except to say it was much better than counting sheep. I also thought about Jane, my wife of three years – they were beautiful, lovely thoughts. There was some conversation with John and, although he’s a great talker, there were long hours of silence. I felt it was very important to have some sort of dialogue. I knew John was in pain and I was quite concerned about him.”