Chatter

Chartroom

Barb Hart

Five boats in the path of Hurricane Matthew

<<

Above, Barb and Stew

Harts sloop La Luna
and another vessel lie
ashore after Hurricane
Matthew swept through St.
Augustine, Fla. Right, the
barge and crane used to
refloat La Luna.

By the morning of Saturday,

Oct. 1, Dan Decker knew
the long wait was over.
For the past several days,
hed had his eyes glued to
GRIB files and storm-track
predictions, hoping that
somehow Hurricane Matthew which was rapidly
developing into one of
the most powerful storms
ever recorded in the Caribbean would nudge east
or west far enough to clear
him and S/V Uma, the
Pearson 36 that he and
his girlfriend, Kika Mebs,
had purchased two years
ago and sailed to Haiti

4 OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

from Florida a few months

prior.
We were on the Internet every day, checking,
checking, checking, he
said. The forecast model
was not budging from a
predicted track that equated to a nearly direct hit
from Matthew, possibly as
a Category 5 storm topping the scales with winds
of at least 137 knots.
Haiti might not seem
like a very good choice to
hunker down in for hurricane season. However,
Decker, 28, a relatively
new sailor on his first boat,

had a strategic rationale

for being there instead of
Florida: He surmised that
although hurricane-prone,
Haiti, where Kika has family, possessed some of the
best protected anchorages
in the Caribbean and very
few cruisers to compete
for them. So, I think you
are actually much better
off there, he said. By contrast, in Florida, if you are
in a good anchorage, you
are there with 200 other
boats with questionable
ground tackle and many of
them unattended.
Matthew was not going
to settle for Haiti. It was
destined to slash through
the low-lying Bahamas on
its way toward the U.S.
East Coast. By the start
of hurricane season in
June, the annual cruisers
migration to the crystalclear water and white sand
beaches of the Bahamas
had long dissipated, with
boats scampering back
to U.S. and Canadian
ports or continuing south
through the eastern Caribbean. Nonetheless, Patrick
Always, with his wife, Byn,
and children Jaedin, 20,
and Abyni, 15 firstwww.oceannavigator.com

www.oceannavigator.com

to some degree, a serious

threat to their vessels and
possibly their lives as it
became clear that Matthew was bearing down on
them. However, with good
preparation and a bit of
luck, they all managed to
weather the hurricane with
no loss of life and no major
damage to their boats.
Modern weather
forecasting gave each of
them about a week of
warning, though Matthew proved difficult to
predict both in regard to
where it was headed and
how strong it would be
when it got there. Partly
for this reason, everyone
interviewed for this story
decided to stay put rather
than attempt to outrun or
outmaneuver the massive
storm at sea.
In Haiti, Decker said
he felt secure where he was
in Petit-Goave, about 35
miles west of the Haitian
capital, Port-au-Prince.
But there were other considerations to take into
account. About a week
before Matthew hit, Kika
had to fly to New York to
tend to her mother, who
was sick in the hospital.
Making matters worse, the
autopilot on Uma was broken. So trying to singlehand away from a hurri-

cane really didnt seem like

a good idea, he said.
Instead, he stripped
everything he could off
the boat to reduce windage, including canvas,
sails and solar panels. He
also dropped Umas massive 105-pound Mantus
anchor. Concerned about
chafe, Decker attached not
one but two rodes, each
about 40 feet of 3/8-inch
chain attached to 150 feet
of 3/4-inch nylon line.

His most vivid memory

of the experience came
after the storm passed.
Everything smells like dirt
or mud, he said. And
then theres the occasional
dead animal floating by in
the water.
Bruce and Rhonda
Hoglund on The Norm
near Palm Beach were on
the hard at Cracker Boy
Boat Works getting major
work done when the storm
approached.

As the eye of then-Category 4 Matthew passed

about 60 miles west of
him with winds of more
than 113 knots on Tuesday, Oct. 4, Decker, who
remained aboard, experienced 80-knot gusts, but
the sustained winds were in
the more manageable range
of 40 to 60 knots. He
attributed it to the protection afforded by the mountains to the south of him.

We had already had

our mast removed to
replace the standing rigging, Bruce explained.
We removed the dodger
and tied down our large
solar panel davit with ropes
and a heavy-duty tow
strap.
His biggest concern?
Storm surge. If the 10- to
12-foot predicted surge
materialized, [the hardstand] would turn into a

Barb Hart

timers in the islands who

arrived in January aboard
their 1975 Norman Cross
46-foot trimaran, 11
Purple Monkeys had
decided to linger, staking
out an anchorage in the
cruisers mecca of Georgetown, Exumas.
The Bahamas has a few
good places for weathering
a hurricane, and Georgetown is one of them,
Always said. There are a
series of hurricane holes at
Stocking Island that provide nearly 360 degrees of
shelter.
Even so, while 11
Purple Monkeys did fine,
nine other boats in those
hurricane holes were damaged or destroyed, mainly
due to mooring lines that
chafed.
Other cruisers in the
path of Matthew include
Bruce and Rhonda
Hoglund on the hard
with their Lagoon 420
catamaran The Norm, in
Palm Beach, Fla.; Barbara
Hart and husband, Stew,
250 miles north of the
Hoglunds in St. Augustine
aboard their 1985 Cheoy
Lee Pedrick 47, La Luna;
and Skip Gundlach and
wife Lydia on Flying Pig, a
Morgan 461, in Beaufort,
S.C.
All these sailors faced,

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 5

Chatter
Chartroom

Patrick Always

<<

Above, Patrick and Byn

Always multihull 11
Purple Monkeys rode out
Matthew in an anchorage
in the Bahamas. Below,
the mainsail lashed in
anticipation of the storm.

Patrick Always

shallow boat bumper-car

lot, where the 170-foot
megayacht seaward to us
would shepherd smaller
boats like us into the
inland residential area, and
likely provide stunning TV
disaster footage showing
our resting place in someones living room.
As luck would have it,
Matthew wobbled and
edged east. Palm Beach got
no more than a sustained
45 knots with gusts of up
to 65 knots.
Skip Gundlach on Flying Pig in Beaufort, S.C.,
chose to ride out Matthew
on a mooring that held
steady despite the 90-knot
winds recorded there.
With the new and very
stout moorings here, we
moved to one and attached
four very sufficient lines,
Gundlach explained
two 1-inch braided lines

6 OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

and another 3/4-inch in

diameter. A fourth line was
1-inch three-strand, and
all were protected with fire
hose as chafing gear, Skip
described. Our boat has
four cleats forward, so we
attached one line to each.
They lengthened the
lines until they could not
slip under the keel but
would be long enough
to handle the anticipated
storm surge.
The Harts La Luna also
weathered Matthew in the
mooring field at St. Augustine, but they were not as
lucky as Gundlach.
The couple had considered acting on a recommendation to move up the
San Sebastian River, but
their options narrowed
considerably when a test
of the engine resulted in
a blown muffler housing.
We would have had to
call for a tow to move into
the river and arrange to
get on a dock. All of this
was late in the process
and we werent sure there
would be a space for us on
Wednesday. We had to
make a decision quickly,
Barbara Hart said.
By then, theyd already
removed everything from
the deck, secured the wind
generator, removed the
bimini and dodger, and

added chafe gear to the

mooring lines. Goodbyes
were said to La Luna and
the couple headed inshore
to a safer location.
It wasnt enough. The
60- to 80-knot winds that
hit St. Augustine generated steep chop and storm
surge. Many of the moorings were simply not up to
the task. The Harts boat
was one of some 30 that
broke free from moorings at St. Augustine and
washed ashore. Theirs and
two other nearby boats
were pushed up on land
with mooring balls still
attached. Ours is one of
the least damaged. She did
not hit and was not hit
by another boat, Barbara
said. La Luna floated on
surge tide into shore and
appears to have settled
slowly onto her port side
as the tide receded. One
stanchion pulled out as it
fought with a tree branch.
That is the only damage.
Harts advice to anyone
finding themselves in a
similar situation? If you
cant add an anchor, or its
not possible to add scope
to the mooring, then dont
stay on a mooring. What
happened to La Luna, she
said, is a direct result of
storm surge and waves.
Scott Neuman
www.oceannavigator.com

Chinese sailor Guo Chuan

went missing and likely per-

www.oceannavigator.com

Oct. 25, and on Oct. 26

a helicopter from the U.S.
Navy vessel USS Makin
Island located Qingdao
and hailed the boat several
times with no replies.
They followed up by
deploying a rigid-hulled
inflatable boat and crew to
conduct a boarding of the
trimaran Wednesday afternoon, the Coast Guard
said in a news release.
The boat crew confirmed
Chuan was not on the vessel although his life jacket
remains aboard.
All told, the U.S. Navy
and Coast Guard combed
more than 4,600 square
miles of ocean while
searching for Guo.
There is no clear evidence of what happened
to the missing sailor,
although his team has posited two theories posted
on his website. One suggested the gennaker cable
broke, and that a bad
wave tossed Guo from
the trimaran while he was
unhooked attending to the
gennaker sail in the water.
The other supposes he
was furling the gennaker

<<

ished last month while trying to break the nonstop

trans-Pacific world record.
Guo, 51, was nearly a
week into his voyage from
San Francisco to Shanghai
when his shore team lost
touch with him on Oct.
25. The U.S. Navy and
Coast Guard launched
a search and identified
Guos 97-foot super trimaran Qingdao on AIS
roughly 620 miles northwest of Oahu, Hawaii.
Navy units boarded
Qingdao and discovered
Guos life jacket on deck
but no trace of the sailor.
The Coast Guard called
off the search before nightfall on Oct. 26. Guo is
officially considered missing until a body is found,
according to a Coast
Guard spokeswoman,
although his chances of
survival appear incredibly
small.
After training to
become a scientist, Guo
started sailing at age 33.
He became hooked after
boarding a 40-foot keelboat in Hong Kong with
a friend in the late 1990s,
his website said. In 2004,

he sailed from the port

city of Qingdao, China, to
Shimonoseki, Japan.
The trip as a friendship ambassador motivated Guo Chuan to learn
to be a professional sailor,
according to Guos Facebook page.
He quickly took to the
sport and went on to set
two endurance records.
Guo set the 40-foot solo
nonstop circumnavigation
world record in 2013 and
the Arctic Ocean Northeast Passage non-stop
sailing world record in
2015. He was attempting
to complete the nonstop
trans-Pacific world record
by completing the San
Francisco to Shanghai voyage within 20 days.
Guo departed San
Francisco on Oct. 18 and
was well ahead of record
pace for much of the voyage. He checked in regularly with his family and
shore team throughout the
voyage, and his last communication occurred at
1500 Beijing time on Oct.
25, or 0300 Eastern Standard Time.
A Coast Guard
HC-130 Hercules began
searching for Guo later on

U.S. Navy photo

Sailor missing during trans-Pacific

record attempt
The USS Makin Island
approaches Qingdao in the
Pacific. Chinese solo sailor
Guo Chuan, Quingdaos
skipper, was not found.

for safe sailing at night

and tried to drop it on
the windward side. While
holding the halyard and
gennaker, it was suggested
he lost control of the halyard, causing the gennaker
to fall on Qingdaos leeward side.
As he was trying to
restrain the gennaker to
fall in the water he got
pushed and ripped out of
the boat either at the side
of the starboard float or in
front of the starboard front
beam, team members
suggested on his website.
Capt. Robert Hendrickson, chief of response
for the Coast Guard 14th
District, described Guo
as a professional mariner
with a deep passion for
sailing.
Our deepest condolences go out not only to
his family and friends but
also to his racing team and
the sailing community,
Hendrickson said.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 7

Chatter
Chartroom

Captains actions, vessel condition factors in fatal accident

The sailor who died last year
while the Coast Guard towed
his vessel back to Hawaii
had attached the towline to
a jury-rigged mast that
snapped while in transit,
according to a Coast Guard
accident report.
The 71-year-old captain

Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources

<<

The wooden ketch

Kolina on land in
Maui.

of the 30-foot woodenhulled Kolina went missing on Nov. 5, 2015, in

the Alenuihaha Channel
roughly 26 miles south of
Maui. Search crews found
his body under the vessel
the next morning. Authorities determined the sailor,
who was not identified,
died from a traumatic head
injury.
Unbeknownst to the
responding Coast Guard
cutters crew, the mishap
victim tethered himself to a
jury-rigged mast while his
vessel was under tow during 8- to 10-foot seas, Lt.
Donnie Brzuska said in a
Coast Guard news release.
During the course of the

8 OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

tow the mast snapped, causing the fatal injury.

In a separate investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board cited
the sailors failure to protect
his personal safety during
the tow and his decision to
launch and operate a poorly
maintained vessel as key
factors in the incident.
The sailor apparently
lived on Kolina in the weeks
leading up to the accident,
during which time he had
numerous interactions with
local authorities. The captain was a seasoned sailor,
and he told local agents he
planned to sail Kolina across
the Alenuihaha Channel
to Molokai Island, west of
Maui. The agents were surprised given the vessels poor
condition.
Kolina was on dry land
much of the time during its final three years.
The wooden sailboat was
originally built as a ketch,
although on its final voyage
the vessel had a mizzenmast
and trysail in place of the
main mast, the report said.
Witnesses told authorities
Kolina resembled more of a
rowing vessel than a sailboat.
On the day of the incident, the captain requested
Coast Guard assistance at
about 1551 local time for a

broken tiller. He had been

adrift in the channel for
two days after his anchor
started dragging two days
earlier on Nov. 3, pushing
him out to sea.
At about 2100, the
110-foot Coast Guard
cutter Kiska arrived at the
sailboats location. Its crew
passed a towline and a
radio to the captain, who
attached it to Kolinas mizzenmast due to the lack
of deck fittings, cleats and
other strong points. The
NTSB report noted the
mizzenmast was not properly supported a conclusion supported by the Coast
Guard.
Kolina lacked any
deck fittings to attach the
towline, so the mariner
attached the towline to a
jury-rigged mast improperly supported with polypropylene line in lieu of
wire-rope standing rigging.
This arrangement was
insufficient to withstand the
forces generated during the
towing evolution and the
jury-rigged mast snapped,
the Coast Guard said.
The tow began at about
2242 in 8- to 10-foot seas
and 30-knot winds. Within
about 15 minutes, crew
lost radio contact with
the captain, who was not
www.oceannavigator.com

wearing a life jacket. Coast

Guard deck crew shortened
the towline to about 100
feet and noticed the broken
mizzenmast floating in the
water. The sailors body
was found the next morning after an air and water
search.
He was about 15 feet
below the surface and close
to the broken end of the
mast, the NTSB report
said. His left ankle was

The Inexplicable Attraction

of Ocean Cruising

entangled in black line connected to a small cleat on a

piece of wood that appeared
to have broken off from the
Kolina.
Rescue crews cut the
captains body free and carried it to Kiska. Conditions
were too rough to tow the
battered sailboat back to
shore, so they marked it
with a buoy and left it in
the channel. Kolina sank
within 12 hours.

Richard Perkins

Schooner captain turned artist

Richard Perkins, formerly
a squared-rigger sailor
and schooner captain, is
a watercolorist living in
Concord, Mass. He offers
a unique product for mariners who appreciate the art
of nautical charts.
Perkins spent 12 years
on traditionally rigged
sailing vessels, including

www.oceannavigator.com

as captain of the 120-foot

schooner Harvey Gamage.
His company, My Custom
Chart, offers quality reproductions of hand-painted
nautical charts. The charts
can be customized with the
customers own boat, house
or favorite fish go to
mycustomchart.com.
David Berson

Contributing editor Eric

Forsyth is an easygoing,
humble fellow. If you
met him in a sailors
bar, youd never guess
that the friendly Forsyth has circumnavigated twice and in five
decades of sailing he has
sailed 320,000 nautical
miles the distance to
the moon, and about a
third of the way back
again!
Naturally all that
offshore experience
has led to all kinds of
adventures and stories
and wisdom about how
to live aboard and sail
to distant corners of the
Earth. Now Forsyth has
distilled some of that
into a one-hour DVD
called The Inexplicable
Attraction of Ocean
Cruising, My 50 Years
at Sea.
On the DVD, Forsyth
talks about how he and
his wife Edith, recent
arrivals in the U.S. from
the U.K., got started
sailing in the early
1960s. How they moved
toward offshore sailing
by buying larger boats,
culminating in the
Westsail 42, Fiona, that

they bought on the West

Coast and that Eric
spent three years finishing. Sadly Edith passed
away and Eric, as a way
of dealing with her loss,
became more devoted
to sailing than ever and
decades later still sails
Fiona.
On the DVD, which
makes use of clips from
decades of film and
video footage, Forsyth
tells stories, like his dismasting in the South
Atlantic and how he got
arrested in Brazil for
breaking customs and
immigration rules. He
shows a bit of holiday
meals and birthday and
equator-crossing celebrations at sea, wildlife
encountered and more.
In 1999 Forsyth was
awarded the Cruising
Club of Americas Blue
Water medal in recognition of his accomplishments. This informative
and entertaining DVD
is a great way to get a
taste of Forsyths incredible journeying on the
worlds oceans. You can
purchase the DVD at
www.yachtfiona.com.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 9

Chatter
Chartroom

<<

Above, the vessel John

Steinbeck used for his
nonfiction work The Log
from The Sea of Cortez.
Below right, the latest inductees into the
National Sailing Hall of
Fame.

The historic vessel used by

author John Steinbeck during a voyage to Mexico is
undergoing a major restoration at a Washington
state boatyard.
Steinbeck and longtime
friend Ed Ricketts spent
six weeks aboard Western
Flyer, the 72-foot sardine
fishing vessel, in 1940.
Steinbecks 1951 nonfiction work The Log from
the Sea of Cortez recorded
the six-week journey into
the Gulf of California to
gather marine specimens.
California businessman John Gregg now
owns Western Flyer, built
in 1937 by Western Boat
Building Co. of Tacoma,
Wash. The vessel is undergoing a $2 million restoration at Port Townsend
Shipwrights Co-op in Port
Townsend, Wash.

10OCEAN NAVIGATOR JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

NSHOF

Salish Sea Blog

Steinbeck vessel undergoing

restoration

Restoring the wooden

boat, which spent at
least a year underwater,
is expected to take two
years. Gregg chose Port
Townsend for the work
after watching local
boatbuilders on the job,
according to the Port of
Port Townsend. Mark
Stout of Scow Bay Boats is
overseeing the project.
Guys were working
with hand tools and caulking boats there is just
a lot of local knowledge
there that I dont think
is duplicated anywhere
else on the West Coast.
So I realized right away
that that boat had to stay
there, Gregg said, according to a statement on the
ports website.
After local tradesmen
complete the restoration,
Gregg intends to use the
vessel for educational
purposes in Monterey
Bay, Calif., near the city
of Monterey where Steinbeck set his two of famous
novels, Cannery Row and
Tortilla Flat.

National Sailing
Hall of Fame
inducts nine
Nine sailing legends were
inducted into the National
Sailing Hall of Fame in an
Oct. 30 ceremony at the St.
Francis Yacht Club in San
Francisco.
Living members of
the Class of 2016 include
Americas Cup winning
helmsman Ed Baird;
Americas Cup and Congressional Cup champion
sailor Bill Ficker; J/Boats
founders Robert and Rodney Johnstone; yachtsman
and sailmaker Dave Ullman
and Americas Cup sailor
and Star World Champion
Malin Burnham.
Tom Perkins, the former
owner of the superyacht
The Maltese Falcon and
longtime sailing teachers
Electa and Irving Johnson
were inducted posthumously. Burnham and Perkins
also received 2016 Lifetime
Achievement Awards from
the Hall of Fame, located in
Annapolis, Md.
n

Notable New Titles

sloop-rigged double-ender.
I had seen two of these
By Kaci Cronkhite
boats in person over the
Wind Spur Books, 2016
years, Cronkhite writes,
www.windspurbooks.com
and I knew they were rare.
Owners adored them. Of
This is a love story. Im
not talking about roman- all the boat designs that had
tic love. Im talking about ever tempted me, this was
obsessive love; a womans the one.
Happily for Cronkhite,
love, indeed adoration, for
an inanimate object in the yacht lay just across the
Strait of Juan de Fuca in
this case a wooden boat.
In 2007, long-distance Victoria, British Columbia,
not much more than a days
sailor and onetime
sail from her own home
circumnavigator Kaci
port. And so begins a tale in
Cronkhite, who lives in
which this particular authorPort Townsend, Wash.,
cum-sailor stumbles on a
was scrolling through
boat, falls in love with said
online ads when she
boat, impulsively decides to
found an item that
buy the vessel and, in the
piqued her curiosity:
process, unburden herself
Special boat for sale.
of a small (or large) fortune
What she was peering
at, she says in this exuber- dollar figure unspecified on a restoration and
ant, fast-paced and, at
refit. And finally, consumed
times, moving narrative
of fulfillment and discov- by an inner imperative to
unearth even the smallest
ery was the most eyebiographic detail of her
popping, heart-stopping
boat I had ever seen. Her newly acquired maritime
artifact, she spends the next
computer screen had lit
up with images of a bright 10 years journeying either
white hull rising dramati- to Europe or up and down
cally at bow and stern, of the American and Canaa voluminous underbody dian West Coasts, piecing
together an account of the
balanced on a long, full
boats origins and history.
keel, and of a mahogany
The sloop is called Pax.
cabin with oval portholes.
Built in 1936 in KalundThe vessel was a clasborg, Denmark, the yacht
sic Danish spidsgatter, or

Finding Pax

www.oceannavigator.com

came from the drawing

board of the famed wooden
boat designer M.S.J. Hansen, a Danish incarnation
of such American masters
as Starling Burgess or
Nathanael Herreshoff.
With a hull of oak and
pine, Pax has an overall
length of 28 feet, a 9-foot
beam and a 6-foot draft.
Gross displacement is 7
tons. The auxiliary is a
25-hp Klassen Isuzu diesel.
In Cronkhites search of
marinas, boatyards and registration files in this country
and overseas, she uncovers
records of at least eight previous owners, who voyaged
in the Baltic or in Canadian
and California waters. The
boat, she notes, was initially
called Tonica. Somewhere
along the ownership chain,
and presumably in honor
of the celebrated flush-deck
cutter sailed in the 1920s
by the French circumnavigator Alain Gerbault, it was
renamed Firecrest.
She has reason to
believe that the boat, probably as Firecrest, was shipped
to California by a yet-to-beidentified owner in 1961.
From that date until 1974,
however, Cronkhites history shuts down. She draws a
blank. What she does know

is that in the mid- to late

1970s, the sloop reemerged
under named ownership,
but now as Pax. And it is
as Pax with Cronkhite
the ninth owner that the
spidsgatter sails today.
In the summer of 2013
she is invited to sail on a
Hansen-designed twin of
Pax. Her account evokes
the beauty of where her
yacht was born. Cronkhite
ends her delightful book
with an appeal. At this
writing, May 2016, 13
years of Paxs history, from
1961 to 1974 probably
in the Los Angeles area, are
still to be found.
Somewhere, she thinks,
there is a sailor or shipwright who, decades ago,
may well have known her
little ship and who has the
historical information she
so eagerly seeks. If Cronkhite can trace that missing
link, the story she tells in
Finding Pax will then be
complete.
Alan Littell

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 OCEAN NAVIGATOR 11