Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea

“I am a whale, love. See, I’m surfacing”—he nudged me forward, the rhythm of the whales sparking something amorous in him—“and now I’m going to dive.”

As Hazana glided down into the trough, Richard reached around and untied my pareu as he clung onto me with his knees. He knotted the material onto the pulpit with a ring knot and cupped my breasts with his warm hands. I let go of the bow pulpit and stretched my arms out wide, Hazana’s fair figurehead.

“Ummm,” I hummed.

“I want to dive with you, Tami,” Richard murmured in my ear. “I want to surface and dive as these wild mammals do.” I reached back and undid his shorts. They fell onto the teak deck.

With growing momentum we surfaced and dived, surfaced and dived, wild and free like the whales, before God, and heaven, and sky. Hazana, the queen whale, set the rolling rhythm we matched.

I later wrote in the logbook: “Bliss!”

* * *

Day Twelve: We hoisted the multipurpose sail, the MPS, which is very lightweight, and made four knots with the southeast trades finally catching us. The trades stayed with us for a number of days, pushing us to the east. We often saw whales, and now dolphins were showing their cheerful faces.

* * *

Dawn of October 8 broke gray, rainy, and miserable. The winds were unpredictable. They gusted from southeast to southwest and back around from the north. We were up near the bow checking the rig when a small land bird crashed onto the foredeck. The poor thing panted, unsteady on its short toothpick legs. Richard got a towel and dropped it over the bird. Scooping it up, he brought the bird to the cockpit, out of the rain and wind. Behind the windscreen, on top of the roof of the cabin, it squatted low, ruffling its wet feathers to warm its tired body. I crumbled a piece of bread, but the bird appeared too afraid to eat. The absurd winds must have blown the tiny bird far offshore. Richard later scribbled, “Cyclonic?” in the logbook.

As I read the word “Cyclonic?” in his log entry, I wondered what that meant to him. Could it be that we were sailing through some rogue whirlwinds? Is that possible? Had the little bird gotten trapped in the clocking wind without the strength or wherewithal to break free? Did Richard fear our getting trapped too? I’d been in plenty of clocking winds in the past few years and never considered them cyclonic. Richard didn’t appear overly concerned, so I took it in stride too.

The next day the weather channel WWV informed us the storm they had been tracking off the coast of Central America was now being classified as Tropical Depression Sonia. They said it was centered at 13° N by 136° W and traveling west at seven knots. That put her over a hundred miles west of us.

WWV also warned of a different tropical storm brewing off the coast of Central America. They were referring to it as Raymond. In comparing our course, 11° N and 129° W heading north-northeast, to the course Raymond was traveling, 12° N and 107° W and heading west at twelve knots, Richard wrote, “Watch this one.”

“Watch this one?” Storms come and go, I thought, often petering out. I had learned that while fishing in New Zealand. Making note of it was Richard’s way of staying on top of things. Unfazed, I just kept up with the odds and ends of our daily routine like cooking, cleaning, steering, and reading. It was especially joyful to sit in the cockpit writing a letter or two to friends left in Tahiti that I would later post in San Diego.

Near midnight the wind dropped. Then it came around to the east-northeast, which fueled Raymond’s fury. We got hit with squalls and rain.

* * *

Monday, October 10, the wind veered to the north. At five in the morning, we changed our heading to north-northwest to gain speed. Our goal was to get as far north of Raymond’s track as possible.

The wind died down to one to two knots, and we ended up motoring for four hours. But by noon, when the wind started screaming, we shut down the engine and put two reefs in the main. It was the smallest we could make the sail without taking it down, and we needed all the speed we could get. We had the staysail up and the genny was reefed also. We were plowing away at five knots to the north-northwest. Tropical Storm Raymond was now at 12° N and 111° W, heading due west. The bird was gone; it had flown the coop.

We decided to fly more sail in an attempt to run north of the oncoming storm. Taut lines, also known as jack lines, ran along each side of the boat from the bow to the stern. This gave us something to clip our safety harness tethers onto while working on the deck. We pushed Hazana to her max. There was no choice—we had to get out of the path of the storm. This storm was quickly surpassing the two horrendous storms I had experienced in the Pacific before I met Richard. I knew Richard had had his ass kicked while crossing the Gulf of Tehuantepec in Mexico on his way to San Diego. But this storm was rapidly turning into the worst conditions we had ever experienced together.

Richard and I got busy clearing the decks, just in case the conditions continued to worsen; we didn’t need heavy objects flying around. We hauled the extra five-gallon jury-jugs of diesel down below and secured them in the head. They were heavy and it was difficult to move them in the rough seas.

At 0200 the next morning, the genny blew out. The ripped material thrashed violently in the wind; its staccato cracks and snaps were deafening. Turning on the engine and engaging the autopilot, Richard and I cautiously worked our way up to the mainmast, clipping our safety harness tethers onto the jack line as we went forward. “You slack the . . .”

“WHAT?” I yelled over the wailing wind.

“YOU SLACK THE HALYARD WHEN I GET UP THERE, AND I’LL PULL HER DOWN.”

“OKAY,” I shouted back, loosening the line.

Richard fought his way to the bow. I was terrified watching him slither forward. Gallons of cold water exploded over the bow on top of him, drenching me too. Hazana reared over the rising swells. The ruined sail whipped violently and dangerously in the wind.

Richard couldn’t get the sail down. Finally he came back to me.

“SHE WON’T BUDGE. CLEAT OFF THE END OF THE HALYARD, AND COME UP AND HELP ME PULL HER DOWN.”

I did as he said and slowly worked myself forward on all fours, ducking my head with each dousing of saltwater. We tugged and pulled on the sail as it volleyed madly in the wind. Finally, after my fingers were blistered from trying to grip the wet sailcloth, the sail came down with a thud, half burying us. We gathered it up quickly and sloppily lashed it down. We then slid the number-one jib into the foil, and I tied the sheet—the line—onto the sail’s clew. I made my way back to the cockpit making sure the line was not tangled—fouled—on anything.

Richard went to the mainmast, wrapped the halyard around the winch, and raised as much of the sail as he could by hand. I crawled up to the mainmast and pulled in the excess line while he cranked on the winch, raising the sail the rest of the way. It flogged furiously, like laundry left on a line in a sudden summer squall. We were afraid this sail would rip too. Once the sail was almost completely hoisted, I slithered as fast as I could back to the cockpit while Richard secured the halyard. I cranked like hell on the winch to bring the sail in. Richard came back to the cockpit and gave me a hand getting the sail trimmed. This sail change took us almost two hours. Richard and I were spent and wet, and we needed to eat. In between a set of swells, I slid open the hatch and quickly went down into the cabin before cold ocean spray could follow me in.

It was hot inside Hazana with all the hatches shut. She was moving like a raft in rapids. What would be simple to prepare, I questioned myself, instant chicken soup? As I set the pot of water on the propane stove to boil, I secured the pot clamps to hold it. I peeled off my dripping foul weather gear and sat down exhausted on the quarter berth.

* * *

Seven hours later, after the horrendous sail change, Raymond was still traveling west at latitude 12° N. Richard scribbled in the logbook: “We’re OK.” Obviously our northerly heading was taking us away from Raymond’s westerly path, so we seemed to be getting out of harm’s way.

All through the rest of the day, the wind and the size of the swells steadily increased. White water blew off the crests of the waves, creating a constant shower of saltwater spray. The ocean appeared powdered, as if white feathers had burst out of a down pillow. Tropical Storm Raymond was now being classified as Hurricane Raymond. That meant the wind was a minimum of 75 miles an hour.

At 0930 October 11, the present forecast put Hurricane Raymond at 12° N and spinning along a west-northwest course. Richard screamed at the radio, “WHY THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU TACKING TO THE NORTH? STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM US!” He had let down his stiff upper lip, and more than anger exploded—it was fear, raw bloody fear. My ribs constricted—an instinct to protect my heart and soul. Richard hurriedly recorded: “We’re on the firing line.” We flew every sail to its maximum capacity. I silently lamented over the useless torn genny; it was a sail we could have really used now because it was larger than the number-one jib. Richard told me to alter course to the southwest. If we couldn’t situate ourselves above Raymond, maybe within the next twenty-four hours we could sneak to the south of the center and reach the navigable semicircle—the safer quadrant that would push us out of the spinning vortex instead of sucking us in. There weren’t many options; we had to do something. It would be pointless to start the engine, for by now we were sailing way beyond hull speed as it was. Richard’s nervousness and fear were obvious. I had never seen him like this. He mumbled a lot to himself, and when I asked what he said, he’d shake his head and say, “Nothing love, nothing.”

But how could I ignore the way he scanned the sea to our east and repeatedly adjusted the sails, desperate to gain even a smidgen of a knot away from the forging Raymond? Adrenaline surged through me—fight or flight. There was no way to fly out of this mess, so it was fight. Fight, fight, fight.

At three o’clock that afternoon the updated weather report told us Raymond had altered its direction from west-northwest to due west with gusts to 140 knots. The afternoon sun sight gave us a second line of position. This indicated we would collide with Raymond if we continued on our southwest heading. We immediately came about and headed northeast again, trying to get as far away from Raymond as possible. The conditions were already rough enough. But to get clobbered by a hurricane would mean that we could lose the rig and really be disabled out here in the middle of nowhere. We did not fear for our lives, as we knew Trintellas were built to withstand the strongest of sea conditions, but the fact that one of us could get seriously hurt loomed unexpressed in both of our minds. With a shaky hand Richard inscribed, “All we can do is pray.”

Later that night, the spinnaker pole’s top fitting broke loose from the mainmast and the pole came crashing down, trailing sideways in the water. Richard and I scrambled to the mainmast trying to save the spinnaker pole. He grabbed it before the force of the water could break the bottom fitting and suck the pole overboard. It took both of us to lash all of its fifteen feet down on the deck. Creeping back to the cockpit we saw that a portion of the mizzen sail had escaped from its slides and was now whipping frantically in the wind.

“JESUS CHRIST, WHAT’S NEXT?” Richard roared. He stepped out of the cockpit, clipped his safety harness onto the mizzenmast, and released the mizzen halyard. Once the mizzen was down, he lashed it onto the mizzen boom.

As he came back to me at the wheel, I noticed how dark the shadows were under his eyes. He tried not to sound sarcastic as he said, “Not much else can go wrong.”

“We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay, love,” I said, trying to convince both of us.

In the darkness, the ocean was highlighted with thick white caps of foam—a boiling cauldron. The barometer had dropped way down the scale as the wind’s wail steadily increased, the seas becoming even steeper, angrier, more aggressive. We were terrified Raymond was catching us, but there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it but sail and motor as fast and as hard as possible.

We stayed on watch, taking turns going below to get whatever rest we could. Our muscles ached from fighting the wheel while trying to negotiate the pounding, erratic seas. Night had never lasted so long.

The next morning broke cinder gray with spotty sunlight shedding an overcast hue on brothy seas. Ocean spray slapped us constantly in the face. Wind was a steady forty knots. We reefed all sails and galloped with a handkerchief of a jib and mainsail. At least it helped steady the boat.

About 1000 the seas arched into skyscrapers, looming over our boat. The anemometer—the wind speed gauge—now read a steady sixty knots and we were forced to take down all sails and maintain our position under bare poles with the engine running. By noon the wind was a sustained one hundred knots. The churning spray was ceaseless. Richard came topside and handed me the EPIRB (emergency position-indicating radio device), as he took the wheel. “HERE, I WANT YOU TO PUT THIS ON.”

“WHAT ABOUT YOU?”

“TAMI, IF WE HAD TWO I’D PUT ONE ON. JUST MAKE ME FEEL BETTER, AND PUT THE BLOODY THING ON.”

So, I did. I fastened my safety harness tether to the binnacle and steered while Richard went below to try to figure out our location now and get an updated position of the hurricane. All he could hear between the pounding and screech of the wind was static. There was no way he could risk bringing the radio outside with the sea constantly cascading over the boat.

Richard came topside, fastened his safety harness, and took the wheel. I sat huddled against the cockpit coaming, holding on with all my strength to the cleat where my tether was fastened. We were helpless while staring at the raging scene around us. The sound of the screaming wind was unnerving. The hull raised to dizzying heights and dove into chasms. Could the seas swallow us? The ascent of the boat over the monstrous waves sent the hull airborne into a free fall that smashed down with a shudder. I was horrified Hazana would split wide open. Finally I shouted to Richard, “IS THIS IT? CAN IT GET ANY WORSE?”

“NO. HANG ON, LOVE; BE MY BRAVE GIRL. SOMEDAY WE’LL TELL OUR GRANDCHILDREN HOW WE SURVIVED HURRICANE RAYMOND.”

“IF WE SURVIVE,” I hollered back.