“They do not have a radio onboard,” he said.
“The rescue helicopter doesn’t have a VHF?”
“No,” he said. “They do not have a VHF or any other kind of radio.”
I looked around at my crew. “A Coast Guard rescue helicopter out in a storm for an abandon ship and they don’t bring a radio.”
“So much for the Moroccans,” Nick said.
“Well shit-o,” Matt said, trying to do Nick’s Brit voice.
So we waited and watched as they lowered their diver down on a cable. The cable had a small step, too small to see.
“No basket,” I said. “It looks like we have to stand on that cable. We’ll be clipped in, too, I’m sure. Make sure you’re clipped in and that the diver checks everything.”
The diver had to swim a hundred feet upwind toward us, into the waves. He had fins, a mask, and a snorkel, but he was struggling. We had seen quite a belly when he was being lowered down, and his arms were thin. We had an out-of-shape diver rescuing us, without a radio.
When he was within about thirty feet, he motioned for us to come, so Matt gave Emi a last hug, said “Here goes,” and jumped in. He swam out quickly to the diver and then they both swam a bit farther away from the boat, the diver holding onto Matt to help him. The ocean was dark green and gray in the overcast light, streaky with spray. The wind and seas had died down but were still high.
The helicopter came closer, but not close enough, and I was confused about what the diver was doing. He and Matt were just floating there. This went on for some time. Meanwhile, we were drifting toward them. We were rolling enough in the seas that our large steel hull presented a danger to them if we came too close. And our ninety-foot main mast, swinging in long arcs, was a hazard for the helicopter.
The diver was having trouble. He seemed tired. Matt was supporting him in the waves, helping him. And then the diver pointed at our boat, gave Matt a weak push toward us, and swam the other way toward the helicopter.
We couldn’t believe it. The diver was saving himself, leaving Matt in the water. Emi was the first to yell and start looking for a line. We all scrambled for lines to toss overboard for Matt.
“Swim toward the bow!” I yelled to Matt. “Around the bow to the boarding ladder!” I didn’t know whether he could even hear us in forty knots of wind. We couldn’t bring him up on the port side. There was no ladder, and he could be pushed under by the rolling of the hull.
Emi was frantic. Nick and Nancy and Barbara were all grabbing lines, too. We had several docklines and several halyards overboard for Matt. I was afraid to use the engines because I might just make things worse. I could run him over or send us too far away, or wrap a line on a prop.
Matt was swimming hard for the bow as we drifted down onto him. He caught a line that Emi and Nick led under the bowsprit from the starboard side, so he was able to hold onto this as he swam, and he cleared the bow. He kept holding on, and stayed close to the boat, Emi and Nick pulling him aft toward the boarding ladder. Then I threw him a life ring attached to a line, and he grabbed onto that. Someone lowered the boarding ladder, I’m not sure who. Emi went down the ladder as Matt came close, and she grabbed him by the collar of his lifejacket to help him onto the lower step, which was plunging into the seas, and then up the other steps onto the deck.
Matt was exhausted. We all went back inside the pilothouse. The helicopter had vanished.
“We’re going to need that liferaft,” I told the German captain.
“It is already inflated and towed behind us. Can you see it?”
It was raining hard and the visibility was bad, but the ship was not far away, and I could just make out the orange raft.
“Thank you,” I said. “Are you going to come around with it?”
“I am turning into the wind now. You will need to come to it.”
“Make sure all the lines are up,” I told my crew. “I don’t want a line around a prop.”
In a few minutes, they reported the lines were up, and I engaged the engines, trying to go straight. The liferaft was about five hundred yards away and moving at several knots.
As I closed the gap, I told the crew what the procedure would be. “I’ll try to put the raft beside our stern on the starboard side. I’ll come in close and hit reverse and that should pull our stern close. Matt will be the first one in, if you’re feeling up for it. Can you jump holding a line and then tie it off?”
Matt nodded.
“Okay, Matt jumps in first with the line, and Nick holds onto the line from our deck. Wrap it around a shroud so you’re not holding all of the weight. Then it will be Emi, then Nancy. Then it will be Barbara. I’m sorry I won’t be jumping with you, but you’ll have lots of area to jump into, and Matt and Emi and Nancy will be there to help.”
“Okay,” Barbara said.
“Then I’ll take the line from Nick, and Nick will jump in. Then I’ll jump in, bringing the line with me. Okay?”
I was having trouble bringing the bow around to get up to the raft. One of the lines had wrapped around my props.
“Fill the ditchbag,” I said. “You can bring your most valuable items, just a few things, whatever will fit in the bag along with the emergency stuff that’s already in there. We can toss it in after Matt. But you have only the next five minutes or so to do it.”
I was having a lot of trouble with the engines, having to punch the throttles to get anything out of the props. It was getting dark and this was our last chance before we’d have to get into our own liferaft, and I didn’t know how the freighter would pick us up in our own raft. In these seas, we could be killed if we floated under their stern.
“Come on,” I said. “Come on.” I asked the captain if he could let out the line a bit more, but he said that was all there was. I asked Nancy to put the portable VHF in a baggie and then in my foul weather gear pocket, and I had my knife. The others were done gathering their things and were waiting on deck. The EPIRB and Inmarsat were flashing red and beeping. It was a scene I hadn’t imagined I would ever see.
“Let’s rehearse the order,” I said, and everyone called out what they would do and when. “Make sure your lights are turned on and working, make sure you have a whistle.”
It took much too long to get up to the raft. The props were badly fouled. But the liferaft did get closer, and closer, and finally I was within a hundred feet of it. I brought the bow in, almost ran it over, and hit reverse.
“Go now!” I yelled. I ran from the helm to the rail and saw that the raft was touching us. Matt was already in, tying off the line.
“It’s on!” he yelled, and Emi threw the ditch bag. Then she jumped. It was about ten feet down to the raft. She hit right in the center. The raft had a partial enclosure on the top, and Matt and Emi were trying to untangle themselves from it to leave room for the next.
“Now Nancy.” And Nancy was in, then scrambling to get out of the way, then Barbara jumped with a yell and was fine, then I grabbed the line from Nick. His foot caught on the wooden rail as he jumped, so that he spun forward in the air and landed on his face at the edge of the raft, his legs in the water. The others pulled him aboard. I unwrapped the line and jumped, trying not to land on anyone.
And that was it. We had abandoned ship. I sat there in the raft, in the storm, and watched my boat float away. It was rocking wildly, the dark wooden masts arcing low to one side and then the other, but it was not taking on any water. It could rock in those seas forever, it seemed, and yet I had abandoned it.
We were being pulled in by the freighter’s crew. I took the VHF out of my pocket, protected in its baggie, and talked with the captain.