On Being Rescued

Just in case it ever happens to you, here’s what to expect

by Chris Forrest

The morning after; Shipwrecked!

Have you ever been a shipwrecked mariner? I hope not. It’s pretty rare nowadays. Even on this year’s stormy Race to Alaska where half the boats self-rescued with everything from rudder to bulkhead damage I believe I was the only person extracted by a Coast Guard RIB. So just in case it ever happens to you, here’s what to expect.

Five days into the event you may find yourself stuck in a small bay off the Johnstone Strait, north of Vancouver Island facing a forecasted three days of 40-knot gales blasting in from the Pacific but tonight there’s a weather window when the winds are predicted to relax to just 25-30 knots. You’ll have hanked the storm jib onto your 27-foot trimaran and double-reefed the main before pulling up both anchors and venturing out to try and make some headway.

After an hour of getting your heads kicked-in the three of you will agree to “sod this for a game of soldiers,” activate the planned bail-out option of heading into Blenkinsop Bay away to starboard where in this 9pm twilight you can see other boats are anchored. This bearing away towards safety will make the boat feel so much more comfortable, the apparent wind will scream less loudly in your ears, the three of you will start thinking about anchoring procedures, fatally relax and hit a rock which was on the charts, no excuse.

At this point your skipper, the boat’s owner will go below, discover that the daggerboard has been forced through its casing and water is rushing in. There will be a lot of shouting. The skipper will steer for shore, better to sink in the shallows. The first mate will be using a bucket to bail while you man the hand pump. You will suggest—“We should put out a pan pan.” He will wordlessly hand you the radio handset. You will try to remember the exact procedure from that training course but won't have your lat/long to hand and it will all come out more garbled than you’d have liked. One of the anchored boats in the bay will immediately respond that they are getting dressed and coming to your rescue. This meant so much at the time it will give you goose pimples just writing about it months later. The Coast Guard will keep interrupting your hand-pumping with follow-up questions seeking the info you should have given first time. Where exactly are you? Any of you hurt? How much fuel onboard? (None, its an engineless race) etc. They will divert a fishing boat to help out, but by the time they arrive, letting you know they have a pump and 100-foot of hose on board, two things will have happened;

Turning the daggerboard into a fixed keel

Firstly, through the sweat dripping into your eyes (you were dressed up warm for night sailing, not frantic pumping) you’ll have realised the water level isn’t going down but nor is it getting worse, and the skipper will remember that the boat is supposed to have natural buoyancy at about this level, just below the cabin benches (and thankfully below the composting heads). You ain’t sinking. Secondly you will have reached the shallows, felt the daggerboard touch bottom. You’ll thank everyone on the radio, letting them know that you're no longer a Pan Pan requiring assistance, just a soggy mess, but the Coast Guard will inform you their rescue RIB is ten minutes away.

Said RIB will hand over a generator pump and an axe with which the first mate will attack the daggerboard casing to try and knock the board back in. You’ll form a relay to get both dry and soggy stuff up and out on deck. It will now be dark on this wilderness shore where brown bears were spotted earlier. The tide is receding. The Coast Guard will say they’re taking you off and ask you to grab some essentials. Your clothes bag is soaking, but you’ll grab your passport, wallet, phone and chargers. The RIB will come back to extract you—their last chance before it gets too shallow for their outboard. You and the first mate are all set to climb off but the skipper, who hadn’t fully realised what was happening, fiercely refuses to leave his boat. The first mate, after some strong language, will say he’d better stay also. You’re now in a terrible situation, loyally obliged to stay but not much wanting to. The others will insist you should go. You’ll board the RIB feeling sensible, but also feeling like a shit for leaving your friends. The RIB skipper will reassure you that you’re doing the right thing— somebody needs to coordinate things shoreside. You’ll thank her before lying down in the back of the RIB while the crew brief you that it was extremely rough on the way over (you’d noticed) and their boat might tip over. They’ll be pleased you are wearing all the right gear and even have a PLB on a lanyard. The return trip will then be delayed while Coast Guard HQ asks the young team to justify why they aren’t extracting all three of us. Once you’ve thumped over to Kelsey Bay on the southern shore the team will be feeling negligent. You’ll reassure them that without tasers and handcuffs there was no way they could have taken your “Crazy Russian” skipper off. 

Presently an RCMP cruiser will draw up. You’ll introduce yourself to Colin, your first Mountie. You’ll go to sit alongside him but his laptop and French Bulldog puppy are occupying that seat so he’ll ask you to sit in the back, locked inside a cage with no internal door handles. This will feel odd. What did you do wrong? Conspiracy to damage an underwater rock? It will now be 1am. Colin won’t be able to raise anybody at the town’s only hotel so he’ll drive you an hour south to Campbell River where there is a hotel still open and room available. You’ll take the best hot shower of the year, drape your stuff around the room to dry out and lie in the bed with body shivering (excess adrenaline?) and mind spinning too much for any sleep.

Instead you’ll post an update on FaceBook and text the race director who surreally will be staying at the same hotel. He’ll suggest a 6.30am breakfast meeting and ask to film an interview. He’ll boost your FB post requesting suggestions for accommodation and transporting the trailer up from Port Townsend. Such is the enthusiasm for R2AK that you’ll soon have offers to help with both. If you are very lucky Daphne Langford will organise a bed at her parents’ and send her student son Aidan to pick you up. That afternoon he’ll drive you way too fast down to Victoria in his Impreza Turbo, stopping at Walmart so you can buy fresh clothes.

The next day Canadian customs will not want to admit your trailer. They’ll refuse to believe; A) that you told a complete stranger on FaceBook where the van keys were secreted and B) that hero Brian had offered to bring the trailer over for free. Surely you are employing an American to do a Canadian trucking job? No? OK but something’s not right here and they need to get to the bottom of it. After you’ve upwardly adjusted their faith in humanity they’ll finally relent. You’ll haul the trailer north, stopping to repay some of Daphne’s kindness by power-washing her boat and planting out her veg patch. 

Five customs officers debate whether to admit the trailer

The following day as you turn off the highway to Kelsey Bay you’ll see two women hitchhiking from the gas station with jerrycans. You’ll pick these sailors up and to your astonishment, they’ll be following the race and know all about your troubles. Maureen and Sandy, stormbound in Kelsey Bay Marina for three days, will be on first name terms with everybody and give you a glowing introduction to Dan, who’s ramp is best suited to your recovery plan and even offers to bring his backhoe to help on the morrow when the winds finally subside and the guys, having epoxy filled the worst of the leak, can sail across the Strait.

Recovery

That night around 10pm you’ll be settling down on the bean bag in the van to get some much needed sleep and there’ll be a hammering on the door. It’ll be your happy shipmates, so sick of existing on that miserable shore in a soggy boat for 3 days that they’ve sailed over before it was maybe fully safe to do so. You will look at their filthy, grinning, salt-encrusted faces, inhale their ripe aroma and even though you yourself are sleeping in a van, you will think: “Jeez, you guys have really let yourselves go.” You’ll point them to the marina showers and you’ll volunteer to sit up all night on “leak watch” working the boat’s small electric pump every 40 minutes.

The plan will have been to beach the trimaran in the morning, prop one wing up as the tide recedes, cut the stuck daggerboard off at low tide and recover to the trailer at the next tide. During that event Dan’s backhoe lifting up the boat will accidentally jiggle something free, the daggerboard will jerk back into its casing and you’ll recover conventionally.

Before; Team Trimorons after completing R2AK Leg One. L-R Cabin Boy/Author, Skipper, First Mate

On the plane home, if you are very lucky, you may also sit next to a beautiful Canadian actress who will fetchingly emote at your tales of high adventure, but that would be an undeserved bonus. •SCA•

Chris is the Dinghy Cruising Association Public Relations Officer

Note: The Dinghy Cruising Association (U.K.) has kindly agreed to come aboard and share some of their excellent articles and content with Small Craft Advisor readers. You can find the DCA column header at the top of our substack homepage. —Eds