Broken Dreams

[John Stone]

Was down at the boat yard working on the Far Reach. Saw this coming up out of the water in the travel lift. Couple salvage guys towed her in held afloat by a bunch of airbags.

Totally destroyed. Catalina 42. Zoom in on the photos. Just massive damage. Rudder bent flat. Prop shaft bent off to the side and all the prop blades bent. Keel broke off. Cleats ripped out of the deck. Mast broke clean off at deck level.

Don’t know the details. What I heard was she was underway and driven up on to a shoal in Pamlico Sound in mid April. The crew got off. She was then pounded for a couple weeks in a series of systems. Finally, a salvager got her recovered. Not sure that’s exactly what happened but probably close.

For those that don’t know, Pamlico Sound is the southern half of a very large bay behind the outer banks of NC. About 60 nm long and 25 miles wide. The water is fairly shallow though much of it can be sailed...except for over those shoals....

I was caught in a very violent July thunderstorm on the FR on my first multi day sail after the boat rebuild back in 2015. I had sailed back down the Pamlico Sound and just started working my way up the Neuse River. The mouth is about 4.5 miles wide where it dumps into the Sound. I had enjoyed a great four days of sailing by myself. Just head over heels in love with the boat after all those years of work. I did not have the stays’l yet as the sailmaker had not finished it. No engine. And I only had the main set up for a single reef. My second reefing line was still in the mail from Jamestown Distributors. What could go wrong? It was not one of my better decisions. 45-60 kits for about 45 min to an hour. Horrific lightning. We just barely beat off Garbacon Shoals. I kept feathering the boat and sailed her like a laser. It was insane. I’ll never be that unprepared again...of course I knew better. When the wind finally backed off I was wiped out. The breeze finally went to nothing like it does after big squall and night was falling. I sculled the boat about a mile to get behind Wiggins Point and dropped the hook in 12’ of water. I just collapsed. I have a lot of confidence in my sailing skills but I’m pretty sure the angels were looking out for me that day. I used a bunch of points out of John Vigor’s Black Box. No doubt about that.

The crew of the Catalina had no such luck. No points in the box.

Be careful out there.

[Frenchy]

There, for the grace of God, go you or I. You were fortunate to have a good boat to help pull you through,
John. I think that with a lot of fin keelers, it's almost impossible to beat off a lee shore.
I was caught in the Gulf of Maine once in my Cal 27. I don't know the wind speed but the rigging was making
that eerie moaning sound, rising and falling in pitch. The waves were probably around 5 feet, lots of spray.
If I tried to sail any closer than 90 degrees to the wind, the bow would just turn downwind. The rudder
was useless. I was sailing with a double reefed main. Unfurling the jib, even just a bit, made things worse.
My points in the box was that there was lots of sea room and no lee shoals. - Jean

[Keith]

I think that we have all had our horror shows. Mine was many years ago coming through the gut at Woods Hole in my 24' Yankee Dolphin (similar to a CD25D). It was a beautiful day with my wife as we were heading from Buzzards bay to the Vineyard. We were in a 15 kt breeze and we were making good kts. I looked to starboard and noticed the red nun about 50' away was leaned over at about 45 degrees and a massive amount of jagged rocks on the other side of the nun. Hmmm that seemed strange to be healed over that much. Then a minute later I looked over again and the red nun was in the exact same location only 25 feet away now. Then it hit me holy Sh-- I'm in the gut with a 6 kt peak current. There were no chart plotters back then that would show those nice yellow, orange and red arrow to warn you. I was having such a lovely sail with my wife that I had forgotten to check the tide charts and Eldridge. There was one of the Wood Hole research vessels coming through the channel towards me so I could not turn to port and come about and I was making no headway and still sliding closer to the nun and rocks. I fired up the engine and was able to motor sail every sooooo slowly making just enough headway to clear the nun and rocks by just a few feet.

Needless to say my heart was pounding like a big bass drum. How could I have been so stupid. I knew about the gut since I was a kid and all of it's wreck horror stories yet due to head up A-- syndrome I was almost one of those stories.

be safe and try to keep you head out of your A--

Keith

[Walter Hobbs]

Thanks for the article. Being only a junior sailor, I had to look up John Vigor's Black Box.
Apparently if you take care and act in a seamanlike manner, one gets installed in your boat and if you continue in like manner points start to fill it. You can't see it or know how many points you have.
Thus I have decided that this is what those inaccessible places between deck and liner or bulkhead and icebox are for. These are black box locations. If you are fortunate enough, there may be a black box filling with points for when you need them.

[Bill Goldsmith]

Terrible loss, but it sounds like the crew was OK. Still sad to see a vessel destroyed.

I think we get a few automatic points in the box just by sailing Cape Dorys.

A few years ago I wanted to take a guest mooring at City Island at the western end of Long Island Sound, NY. I radioed the tender captain who told me to "motor around the red "W" buoy and wait for an assignment." I dutifully obeyed and in short order I could hear BAM--BAM--BAM from the bottom of the boat. The bottom is soft mud and sand, and the mooring field was nearby, so it wasn't grounding. And no rocks anywhere. So then I looked at the (paper) chart and lo and behold the "W" was marking a WRECK. At low tide no less! Needless to say I was a little steely with the tender captain who came out to get us from our mooring. But not too gruff, because the buck really stopped with me. It should have dawned on me what the "W" buoy meant and I should have given it a wider berth. The best part of the story is: once I got home, I arranged a short haul and discovered only a couple of bottom paint scrapes on the keel. Didn't even reach the gel coat.

[tartansailor]

Yes, you're right Bill. when sailing, there is nothing worse than a surprise.
Dick

[fmueller]

John,

Just a question ... no disrespect ... there was no chance of throwing the hook over and just riding out the wind. Was there just too much seaway ?

I ask this because last summer I was racing a squall front coming in one late August afternoon ... I knew it was coming for at least 1/2 hour (ugly black sky, cell phone radar etc) and thought I could beat it back to the slip ... had gotten my sails down and had maybe 1/2 mile to go ... I knew the wind would gust out of the north and it would pin me to my north side address slip - if I could make the turn south down the fairway then west into my slip ... so the wind and rain hit like a wall with about 600 yds to go and it was fierce ... full throttle, I could make just 1-2 knots ... bare poles and just quartering into it and I had 15-20 degrees of heal ... and that moaning sound.

I did make the turn down the fairway then abruptly into my slip, and the wind did pin me after a full throttle reverse ... it was drastic maneuvering ... plus two fellows staggered out to catch lines ...

BUT in hindsight ...

I was actually "ok" out in the wind under the engine, and even if the engine had quit it would have been bare polls and 20 miles of Narrsgansett Bay to the south and just run with it till it passed - or I could have just thrown the hook over in the 12 ft of water in that area of the Bay ... and of course most summer squalls are 20 minute affairs, and that was the case with this one ...

In other words I made a very very poor decision, really, even worse, I didn't even decide, I just reacted and never ran through the options in my mind ... I risked my boat and personal safety, other boats, and especially the guys who lurched out to help me land ... I realized after the fact that the adrenalin of the "race" and the wildness of the elements had eliminated clear thinking ...

Fred

[John Stone]

John,

Just a question ... no disrespect ... there was no chance of throwing the hook over and just riding out the wind. Was there just too much seaway ?

I ask this because last summer I was racing a squall front coming in one late August afternoon ... I knew it was coming for at least 1/2 hour (ugly black sky, cell phone radar etc) and thought I could beat it back to the slip ... had gotten my sails down and had maybe 1/2 mile to go ... I knew the wind would gust out of the north and it would pin me to my north side address slip - if I could make the turn south down the fairway then west into my slip ... so the wind and rain hit like a wall with about 600 yds to go and it was fierce ... full throttle, I could make just 1-2 knots ... bare poles and just quartering into it and I had 15-20 degrees of heal ... and that moaning sound.

I did make the turn down the fairway then abruptly into my slip, and the wind did pin me after a full throttle reverse ... it was drastic maneuvering ... plus two fellows staggered out to catch lines ...

BUT in hindsight ...

I was actually "ok" out in the wind under the engine, and even if the engine had quit it would have been bare polls and 20 miles of Narrsgansett Bay to the south and just run with it till it passed - or I could have just thrown the hook over in the 12 ft of water in that area of the Bay ... and of course most summer squalls are 20 minute affairs, and that was the case with this one ...

In other words I made a very very poor decision, really, even worse, I didn't even decide, I just reacted and never ran through the options in my mind ... I risked my boat and personal safety, other boats, and especially the guys who lurched out to help me land ... I realized after the fact that the adrenalin of the "race" and the wildness of the elements had eliminated clear thinking ...

Fred

No worries Fred. Good question. I don’t like the idea of anchoring unless I am in the lee of some kind of protection. But I had 30 miles of fetch upwind across Pamlico Sound. In short order we had 5-6’ steep short period waves. Very bad. Anchoring is the last option. I see it mostly, though not always, as a last act of desperation to throw out the anchor. At that point I would have been removed from the equation and everything would have depended on the ground tackle. The shoal was to leeward. To my way of thinking, as long as I had the tiller in my hand and was able to sail then I was in command and my fate was going to be decided by my own skills and judgment.

There have been a half dozen times when we have been headed back to the marina at the end of a summer afternoon sail and been confronted with big thunderstorms and a decision to race in to the sick or stay out and let it pass. So far, I have always decided to stay out. These days we go to a double reefed main and stays’l and just heave-to for an hour and enjoy a cup of coffee, the rain, and marvel at the docile behavior of the FR when hove-to.

No two boats are the same, or the skippers/crew, or the specifics of the situation. But when given the choice I prefer to depend on myself. My mistake was going out sailing that day without the boat really prepared as she should have been. A real “what was I thinking” moment.

Happy sailing.