Listers, Here’s an overdue report on this situation. Basically a tale of warning about what can go wrong offshore, with potentially very serious consequences.
By coincidence a few weeks ago I came into contact on Facebook with one of Calypso’s crew, a retired pediatrician. We subsequently spoke on the phone, and she documented her experience on her Facebook timeline, which I’ll quote below. Calypso’s owner and captain is a 75-year old man who’d never been offshore. He found passage crew on findacrew.net <http://findacrew.net/>, and they too had never been offshore (and in two cases had little sailing experience). The boat experienced a sequence of cascading problems on the passage, which put it and its crew in a very serious situation: no electricity, no engine, low fresh water, and broken forestay many hundreds of miles offshore. The sequence started with problems furling an asym on a top-down furler. That somehow caused problems with the genoa furler too: the genoa wouldn’t furl all the way in or out. That in turn contributed to the forestay snapping when the wind picked up. When that happened, the crew lashed the genoa down the length of the side deck, and fouled the prop with sheets or lashing lines. The prop was fouled hard enough, in forward gear, that it wasn’t possible to shift to neutral. So they couldn’t run the engine. So they got down to 4% battery. They had to shut off all electrical loads including radio, radar, GPS/AIS, lights, watermaker, and refrigerator. They had to drift for two days waiting for seas to calm enough to dive the prop. They lost refrigerated food and got down to 11% fresh water (with apparently no bottled water aboard). If they had not been able to get off distress calls on their electronics and satellite phone before shutting down, they would have been in serious trouble. Fortunately two other boats received notifications of Calypso’s distress and came to assist, accompanying the disabled boat for many days. They lent water and fuel, support and advice. One of those boats was a Leopard 40 named Nobody’s Home in the Salty Dogs rally to Antigua, whose delivery captain was a man named Vinny, who is a friend of the delivery captain Scott of the boat I was on (a Fountaine Pajot Saona 47 named Quite The Catch). We first heard about this whole situation when Vinny texted Scott via satphone. Calypso departed from Hampton, VA on Saturday October 30th (day 1 for them) as part of the Salty Dogs rally. My boat departed Newport, RI on Monday November 1st, bound for the USVI (not part of the rally). Calypso's forestay snapped on their day 7 or 8: Saturday November 7th or Sunday November 8th. By that time there was a strong storm happening between the east coast and Bermuda, which would slam New England several days later as a nor’easter packing hurricane-strength winds. By Friday November 6th Chris Parker was advising all boats in the vicinity to get as far south and east as possible, as quickly as possible. At that time, Quite The Catch was approaching Bermuda, and we were seeing forecasts of >50kts on PredictWind southwest of our position over the next couple days. So we diverted SE two days and 400nm out of our way to avoid that weather. Calypso probably sailed right through it, but the max wind strength they saw (at least, while they had instrumentation) was 37 knots. Calypso was able to compensate for the broken forestay using halyards to the bow stem. They got her prop unfouled and engine started and batteries charged. Then she was able to limp along under reefed main. Unbelievably, despite all that and a subsequently broken autopilot, her captain wanted to continue to Antigua and was requesting fuel! On the evening of Thursday November 11th, as navigator on Quite The Catch, I plotted an intercept course to backtrack eight hours to Calypso and give her fuel, but we decided not to do it. When Calyspo got far enough south to hit the easterly trade winds, her captain wanted to start tacking upwind to Antigua, starting with a NE leg. At that point her crew mutinied, and forced the captain to turn towards the USVI. She arrived in St. Thomas on November 15th after 16 days at sea from Hampton, VA. By contrast my boat arrived on November 12th after 12 days at sea from Newport, RI (two of which were extra days for weather routing). Learn what you will from this saga. Now I will paste the crew member’s Facebook postings, in the order in which she posted them. "Wow! Where to start?? We just spent 16 days at sea and ended up in the US Virgin Islands instead of Antigua. Lots of stuff on the boat broke and because of it we couldn’t sail east into the wind to get there. We anticipate being able to pick up another sailboat from here and continue to explore the Caribbean. Here are some pretty sunrises and sunsets while I process how to share this story.” "Days 3-6: Our trip was supposed to be about 14 days. We should have traveled east for the first 5 or so days until we got through the Gulf Stream, and then we would head S or SW using the trade winds to arrive in Antigua. It very much didn’t happen that way. First, our Spinnaker (a very light, broad sail that sits in the front of the boat and is used in light winds), wouldn’t open or close from its wound-up position properly. We ended up having to disassemble it and put it away in a bag every day (see 5th pic). Even though the bag was clipped to safety lines on the boat, the rough weather caused the bag to open and dumped the sail into the ocean. Twice, we woke to find the sail floating alongside the boat. Nothing like picking up 250 pounds of wet sail out of the ocean while the boat is bumping along at 7 knots.” "Day 7-8: Turns out the the spinnaker problem somehow turned into a jib problem. (The lines may have wrapped around it at some point, or something) The jib wouldn’t wind itself closed/open properly and the extra stress caused the forestay (the forward cable that holds up the mast) to snap. Now we were down 2 sails and had minimal support to our mast for our last, the main sail - so had to drop our last sail to save the mast. We tied the jib to the deck but apparently didn’t secure the lines well enough and they (the lines) drifted under the boat and tangled in our prop. No prop —> no motor to charge the batteries—> batteries dropped to 4%. Had to retain enough power to fire the engine when we eventually unfouled the prop so turned off all lights, all radar and radio, the refrigerator (yes, we lost most of our food), the desalinator (we were down to 11% water), and we were adrift with no power for a night. Luckily, our 2 buddy boats drifted with us but I won’t lie, we were scared shi!tless.” "Day 8-9: As we were praying for our lives we sorta forgot to take pictures for the next part of the saga but here’s the gist: As our forestay broke and the jib sail was whipping all over the place I was trying to figure out how to get help. In my panic, I couldn’t find the number to our shore support so I called my dear sister, Stephanie, who couldn’t hear anything I was saying on the satellite phone other than “Mayday” so she just called the Coast Guard! Then I saw all the SOS buttons on all our equipment. Needless to say, both the coast guard and shore support for the rally (endless thank yous to Kevin and Glenn) responded with calm guidance and the other two boats (mentioned yesterday). After spending the first night adrift with no lights or battery power (due to the lines wrapped around our prop), the next day we were able to slowly sail with a heavily reefed main (see video and explanatory note below it) and manual steering. The second night, still without power, we blindly sailed all night long just following the lights of our buddy boat. On the second day, we finally had calm seas and Steve and I went swimming under the boat to remove the lines from the prop. Truth be told, Studly Steve gets to add that job to his résumé. With the prop cleared, we were able to start the motor, charge the batteries and get underway again, albeit with a reefed main sail. But the story isn’t over quite yet…” "Day 11-16: With a damaged forestay we would probably have to motor more than we originally planned. After swimming under the boat, our two buddy boats took advantage of the calm day and sent over five 5 gal Jerry cans of fuel and two 5 gal bottles of water in a dinghy. As water in our tanks got low, we had noticed it was cloudy and there was all kinds of stuff floating in it. The three of us quietly kept one of the 5 gal water bottles to ourselves and didn’t tell our captain. After we started up again, we thought we might make it to Antigua after all but we had stiff winds and couldn’t sail into them because of the damage we had. Then our auto-pilot died and we couldn’t recalibrate it in the rough water and the radar which identifies hazards and other ships had failed. So when our cap’n suggested sailing north (!!) to get around the wind we just about mutinied. We’d survived two weeks without showers, the loss of much of our refrigerated/frozen food (shrimp, salmon, chicken, lunch meat, milk), the stench of the head, drinking cloudy water, 3 hour watches around the clock, not being able to sail at more than 5 knots, and being adrift at sea. We had had enough and told him he need to seek the nearest landfall. He initially said we’d have to throw him overboard, which we considered. Eventually, he came around and the US Virgin Islands here we come.” "Although we had a harrowing experience this hasn’t scared us off of sailing. There’s something peaceful about being out there surrounded by blue in all directions." Cheers, Randy Stafford S/V Grenadine C&C 30 MK I #79 Ken Caryl, CO > On Nov 12, 2021, at 11:39 AM, Chuck Gilchrest via CnC-List > <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> wrote: > > Any thoughts I had about becoming a delivery skipper as a retirement “career” > have dissolved and disappeared after reading this thread.. > Best of luck Randy on the remainder of the voyage and keeping fingers crossed > for Calypso. > Chuck Gilchrest > Half Magic > Landfall 35 > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Nov 12, 2021, at 1:18 PM, Randal Stafford via CnC-List >> <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> wrote: >> >> Thank you Dennis and all who replied. I just got a cell signal off Tortola, >> about 25nm ahead. >> >> As of this morning Calypso was some 200nm astern of us; we’re heading 214M >> to the western tip of Jost. In addition to her previous troubles (broken >> forestay, wrapped prop, etc.) now apparently her autopilot has also failed. >> But her owner is apparently determined to continue to Antigua, and borrow >> fuel to do so, instead of ducking a closer port for repairs. I gather >> someone dived the prop to clear it. >> >> There was a nasty storm between the Carolina coast and Bermuda last weekend. >> PredictWind showed 50 knots forecast, and by last Friday Chris Parker was >> advising boats to get as far south and east as they could, as fast as >> possible. >> >> I’m crewing the delivery of a Fountaine Pajot Saona 47 from Newport to St. >> Thomas. We sailed over 300 miles out of our way, almost to the 61st >> meridian, to avoid that storm, adding two days to our trip. And still we saw >> 41-knot gusts last Saturday or Sunday night. And due to that big low >> pressure system, the wind was out of the south for days instead of the usual >> easterlies, hampering our progress to the Caribbean. >> >> Anyway, I think Calypso was in the darkest red part of that storm and got >> beat up pretty badly. >> >> The delivery captain on my boat, Scott, has a friend Vinny who is delivering >> another boat to Antigua in the Salty Dog Rally, with the owners aboard. >> They were the closest vessel to Calypso when her distress call came in, and >> went to assist her. Vinny texted Scott about the situation, including issues >> with crew dynamics on Calypso. >> >> Last night we could have diverted six or eight hours to rendezvous with >> Calypso, but didn’t want to give away our fuel to a captain making (in our >> opinion) unreasonable decisions. So we never met up. >> >> As far as I know, Calypso’s owner is not on this mail list. >> >> Cheers, >> Randy >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >>> On Nov 9, 2021, at 3:26 PM, Dennis C. via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> Chuck is correct. >>> >>> I'm assuming that the 121 Calypso is the one making 5 knots trailing the >>> fleet. >>> >>> -- >>> Dennis C. >>> Touche' 35-1 #83 >>> Mandeville, LA
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