Earlier, I wrote about the tragedy of Low Speed Chase. A touching and beautiful memorial was held on Saturday on the water near the San Francisco Yacht Club.

Below is a brief capture I made at the memorial, as we passed by the bagpiper on Farallon.

Low Speed Chase Memorial Pipes (6MB mp4)

I’ve compressed the video significantly (from 80MB) but left the audio alone. The buzzing in the background is from a helicopter flying overhead.

Update: A Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter left Half Moon Bay Airport and reached the Farallon Islands in 15 minutes, picked up the boat and returned. This was the last week to retrieve the boat before the Islands would be closed and protected as a bird sanctuary until October.

Horrible tragedy struck Saturday in the difficult wind and wave ocean conditions near the Farallon Islands, 50 km offshore (further than the English Channel is wide) from San Francisco.

Latitude 38 relayed the official statement from the San Francisco Yacht Club in an article published today called “Search Suspended for Farallones Racers”

Acting as spokesman for the club, YC board member Ed Lynch explained that as Low Speed Chase was rounding the largest island in the southeast portion of the Farallon cluster, it was hit broadside by a large wave that launched several crewmembers overboard. The boat was reportedly turned around in an attempt to rescue them, but a second wave hurled all but Vos into the churning surf, and the hull was eventually driven onto the foaming lee shore. The vessel’s EPIRB was activated, and almost simultaneously a mayday was called in from Jim Quanci’s Cal 40 Green Buffalo, which was sailing nearby. Quanci and his crew were the first to spot the Sydney 38 in distress, but they had no way to offer assistance in the dangerous conditions: 25- to 30-knot winds and breaking waves at least 10 feet high. Nor did any of the 47 other competitors.

The San Francisco Chronicle has posted a series of aerial photos that show the unmistakable hull of a Sydney 38 lying on its side nearly 100 feet from the waves on the rocks of Shell Beach on Maintop Island, mast broken and sails shredded.

Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

A webcam view also is available from the California Academy of Sciences

The resting position of the boat suggests where and how the accident could have occurred as it tried to bear-away and round the island, one of the most dangerous moments of heavy-weather sailing.

Upwind preparation to round the Farallones, Maintop Island on right. Photo by me.

As a boat turns away from the wind to round the island it exposes its starboard side to the power of the water. The leward side of the bow tends to drive down and slow the boat while waves push into its side. The steep waves near and island coupled with the angles and power of big open ocean surges can make for extremely difficult manoeuvring even for the most experienced sailors. A miscalculation on wind or wave speed can quickly bring the boat dangerously close to the rocks and severely limit reaction time and remove all but a few evasive options.

Open ocean water is unforgiving; driving a race boat like the Sydney 38 straight into the back of a wave, getting overpowered and broached, or losing steerage is a big risk that is hard to avoid. The skipper has to work closely with the crew to keep their vessel balanced and always riding up and over a mine-field of troughs and crests in order to avoid being swamped by waves from the front, side and rear, or completely knocked-down and washed over from side.

Meanwhile the boat can be tossing and turning, creating a slippery and unstable platform, so trim strength and team coordination is far more difficult than usual. High winds from the unlimited fetch of the Pacific Ocean make the situation only more difficult. A 25 knt breeze blowing with nothing to get in its way before you do feels a lot more like a heavy 35+ knts on land.

The article in Latitude 38 acknowledges that the standard race clothing and equipment for the offshore racers would not have been able to preserve their lives for much time.

Although all were reportedly wearing lifejackets and heavy weather sailing gear, the “window of survivability,” as a Coast Guard spokesman put it, in those frigid waters closed long before the search was suspended.

Once washed overboard, into the 52 F (11 C) water of the Farallones, people have only about 10 minutes of mobility, making it impossible to swim, and they fall unconscious within an hour. The cold water around the island also is known for some of the world’s largest great white sharks.

Alexis Busch, one of the crew lost at sea, is said to have been the first female bat girl in Major League Baseball. The San Francisco Giants will pay tribute to her tonight.

Sincerest condolences go out to the friends and families of these fellow sailors.

Updated to add, April 24th: Farallones Survivor’s Full Account.

As the wave approaches it begins to face up, its front flattening as it crests. By the time our boat meets it, there’s no escape route. Alan steers the boat into the wave and the bow of Low Speed Chase ascends the breaking wave, which seconds sooner would have been a giant swell and seconds later would have already broken. Instead, we’re heading into a crashing wall of water with 9-10 knots of boat-speed and it breaks directly on us. I lock my right arm to the bottom lifeline and brace for the impact. The last thing I see is the boat tipping toward vertical with a band of water still above it. A single thought races through my head: “This is going to be bad.”

[…]

As for what happened in that first wave, my head was down and I initially thought we might have pitch-poled. Nick, who broke his leg while it was wrapped around a stanchion and had a better view, tells me the boat surfed backwards with the wave for a stretch then rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise before the wave finally barrel rolled it. This seems logical and explains how we ended up pointed back the same direction we started.

Updated to add, April 20th:

NOTICE OF MEMORIAL FLOTILLA:

A Protector named Farallones will lay anchor off of Belvedere Point in the Racoon Straits on Saturday April 21st, Evening at 7:00 PM.

We invite all friends, watermen, and sailors to come out to the water and join us for Sunset. Our Memorial schedule is as follows:

All boats are asked to ensure everyone has a life jacket and you turn on your running lights to indicate you are part of the memorial.
Flotilla is Invited to encircle the boat and anchor or motor. The schedule is as follows:

7:25 PM Bagpipe will begin playing
7:30 PM 1 minute of silence for each crew member
7:38 PM Bagpipe plays
7:46 PM 8 Bells at 30 seconds per ring
7:50 PM Boats are asked to lay wreathes and flowers in the Bay as Bagpipe plays
7:55 PM Dusk
8:00 PM Return to Shore

Last month the boat Gold Coast Australia sustained crew member injuries and was forced to land in Taiwan after helicopter airlift attempts and ship-to-ship transfer had to be aborted during rough sea state.

Gold Coast Australia in Port

The skipper of Singapore, Ben Bowley, wrote a graphic account of the extreme conditions sailors faced.

At times the yacht has been less of a big red bus and more of a big red submarine. In the early hours of this morning the boat punched through an enormous solid wall of water, stopped dead and then we had the next wave break directly over the boat. The yacht ended up hove-to with the cockpit and snake-pit full to the brim with water. All the on watch (harnessed on at all times in these conditions) ended up fully immersed and floating.

To give some example of how much water came thundering over the deck, our wooden helming board that normally sits wedged in the aft corner of the cockpit well ended up wedged between the radar post and the pushpit about a foot clear of the deck. So much water came pouring down the companionway that a spare life-jacket in a pocket outside of my cabin inflated. It has taken the best part of four hours to finish getting the water out of the bilges this morning. Luckily no one was hurt and nothing got broken.

I’ve experienced these conditions and they definitely put the power of nature in perspective. Below is a self-portrait after two-weeks on the Pacific Ocean of what I came to appreciate as normal in any kind of breeze and wave state — goggles, full foul-weather gear, life-vest, harness, tethers, jacklines…. The photo may at first give the impression of calm but note how shiny the deck is and how the lines have been pushed together from waves crashing over the windward side.

The real challenge with ocean sailing is that you not only are in the grip of dangerously unpredictable forces, but you are a very long way from assistance or a controlled/stable environment.

A competitor in the Volvo Round the World Race once described to me what being a professional ocean sailor is like: “imagine playing rugby at maximum physical output, but without rest, and if you break a rib you have to keep going in the wet and cold for days or even weeks”.

I used to think of it like climbing Everest because of all the gear and fitness involved, but it really is more like space travel because you depend so much upon a self-sufficient vessel for survival. The Everest of Amateur Sailing blog gives more details.

Tim Burgess, 31, broke his left leg above the knee while working on a headsail change on the foredeck of [Gold Coast Australia], which is competing in the Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race and is racing from Singapore to Qingdao, China.

Waves up to four metres high and winds of around 30 knots have been providing a gruelling test for the amateur crews of all ten 68-foot yachts and the conditions.

[…]

“The force with which Nick [Woodward] hit his head on the lockers beside the bunk was enough to crack the plywood. There are no obvious signs of further injury however he still has a headache so we are evacuating him as a precautionary measure,” explains [Gold Coast Australia Skipper Richard Hewson].

I suspect he’s lucky it was plywood instead of carbon. Once in port both were successfully transferred to hospital and given medical care.

Updated to add a first-person account of the conditions and accident:

Sleep became the unknown, the unfamiliar as we all struggled to get any rest in the pounding swell and challenging conditions where a hour of sleep was considered a good nights rest.

[…]

With these cold rough conditions our physical state was taking a pounding. My hands were so sore to touch from trying to drag sails down again the gale force winds, my eyes were red and raw from trying to see through the continues spray when I was helming and I had even managed to get wind burn not only on my lips but my eyelids as well. My fatigue was extreme where my muscles would be burning from just getting on to the deck.

[…]

Just when Tim was tying down one of the last sail ties I noticed a large wave coming. I shouted ‘Wave’ which gave Tim enough warning to hold on. He was sitting with his legs either side of the inner-forestay and as the wave cascaded down the deck it washed his leg underneath the Stay Sail and pushed his body around the inner-forestay snapping his leg in two place above his knee.

Although the boat was just 60 nautical miles from land at 8 am when the accident happened, the crew could not transfer the injured men to medical care until 9 hours later.