Editor’s Note: During the Newport Bermuda Race this year, the J/122 Alliance struck a submerged object in the Gulf Stream in the middle of the night, suffering damage that caused her to sink (see “A Eulogy for Alliance,” October 2024). Fellow racers aboard Ceilidh, a J/121, and Banter, an Archambault 40, responded to Alliance’s mayday, and while Ceilidh took on the entire nine-person crew from their liferaft, Banter stayed close by until everyone was safely in Bermuda. In September, US Sailing awarded the responding crews its Arthur B. Hansen Rescue Medal. SAIL Managing Editor Lydia Mullan was a member of Alliance’s regular crew and spoke with others about key takeaways from the sinking.
From its onset, the J/122 Alliance program was designed for learning. It created opportunities for talented young sailors to participate in offshore races alongside veterans, held scores of training days to prepare and foster crew dynamics, and enriched the on-water experience with supplemental educational materials. We learned countless lessons on seamanship and the practical skills of running a boat. In the wake of her sinking, boat owners Mary Martin and Eric Irwin, along with crewmembers from the boat that rescued us and carried us to Bermuda, share the program’s final lessons.
1. Keep Learning
For Eric, the successful rescue of all nine crew member on Alliance can be traced to the founding ethos of the program. “When we bought the boat four years ago, we wanted to establish a solid foundation for everything: safety, navigation, crew development…That solid foundation from the very beginning was key. Practice, repetition, muscle memory, all of that made a difference in an emergency situation,” he says.
“We recognized that we needed to learn. As new skippers of an offshore race boat, we had to,” says Mary. “We had offshore experience, but being the owners and in charge of the boat, we needed to ensure that we could safely race the boat offshore and be responsible for other people’s lives. We don’t take that lightly.”
Before the race, our team met monthly to discuss everything that goes into a race like this: navigation, weather, medical…there was homework, and we were assigned pretty much every lecture, report, and presentation on the race that’s ever been posted online. We discussed in depth the lessons from the tragedy in the 2022 race, when 74-year-old Colin Golder went overboard and drowned. There were pop quizzes, and many of us were involved with pre-season prep.
“We learned every year that we had the boat, and we carried those lessons forward. Last year we needed a bigger pump for another race, and we decided that the weight and space it took up was worth it to bring along on this race,” Mary says. In the end, having the extra pumping capacity bought extra time for our rescuers to get to us.
2. Crew Consistency
Some offshore crews are cobbled together with friends of friends, whoever can take vacation time, and maybe that one guy you don’t know too well but who checks the box for Safety at Sea or medical requirements. Alliance was not built that way. The majority of our Newport Bermuda crew had raced over 1,000 miles together, and the rest had been building their experience through practice days. That intimate knowledge of the rest of the crew, their strengths and weaknesses, brought us closer, but it was also a huge asset when we were trying to secure the best outcome of our boat sinking in the middle of the night hundreds of miles from land.
“One of the first things that comes to mind is how important it is when talking about prep for a race—before you can even practice or think about emergency procedures—is talking about crew,” says Austin Graef, who drove the J/121 Ceilidh to Alliance’s rescue. “Picking your crew, knowing each other’s strengths, talking about roles and responsibilities based on each of our strengths—that matters. If I could go back, I’d have had more of those conversations beforehand.” As the responding vessel, he says they had to quickly make a plan, and it was easiest for those who had regularly sailed together to fall into roles compatible with their skill sets.
3. It’s Not Just About Your Boat
“One of my biggest takeaways was just how unprepared I felt to rescue another boat,” remembers RJ Graef, Austin’s brother, who was also aboard Ceilidh. “You learn how to do the emergency stuff on your own boat, but you don’t practice being a first responder.”
“They teach so much in Safety at Sea, they teach you so much about responding to your own emergency situation, but they don’t teach you really anything about how to pick up people from a liferaft,” agrees Austin. “Being in the recoverer role is a totally different situation.”
Aside from crew overboard incidents, there isn’t much standard procedure for rescuing that you can practice ahead of time. Developing strong boathandling skills, situational awareness, and level headedness will help.
4. Find What’s Familiar
One thing that the Safety at Sea course recommends is not changing jobs in an emergency. If you’re used to being in one role, that’s where your muscle memory will kick in, and that’s where you’ll be best equipped to notice if the situation is deteriorating. Still, your job won’t necessarily be as simple as it usually is.
“One thing that stuck with me was pulling down sails in the middle of the Gulf Stream,” says RJ. “It’s not your standard take down, the boom’s flying all over the place, and we had to tie it down, do an emergency flake just to get it out of the wind. Even the things you’re used to doing can be really different in an emergency situation.”
5. Mind the Lines (All of Them)
“One of the first things we decided we needed to do was de-rig Ceilidh,” Austin remembers of the moment they got into comms with Alliance. “The last thing we wanted to do was foul the prop in that circumstance. All of the lines, tweakers, everything got put away. We did keep our spin sheets neatly coiled in the cockpit to make sure we had a backup to the liferaft painter on hand just in case, but we were only thinking about all the lines our boat. We weren’t thinking about the liferaft’s drogue.”
“The first pass, we stayed wide to assess the situation, and between the spotlight and the moonlight, we noticed it under the water. That was critical. It’s not long, but there was a chance it could’ve fouled the prop while we were circling the liferaft to get to [Alliance’s crew]. Once we got eyes on it and knew which direction it was dragging, we could avoid it, but if we hadn’t spotted it, it could’ve taken out our engine in the middle of the recovery.”
6. Managing the Fallout
“You’re going through your own thing, but so is everyone else around you. Everyone’s coming to that situation from their own place, so it’s important to remember that,” says RJ. His brother agrees: “We all had a ton of adrenaline in our systems. We were all awake, calm, focused. And then as that adrenaline wore off, it impacted everyone differently. Some people needed extra rest; some people took longer for it to wear off. But you’re still in the heat of things. We’re still out on the ocean, it’s not over yet, and that’s where you need to adapt and be flexible.”
Small human comforts, though largely impossible when you have 16 people on a 40-foot boat for two days, mattered too. I was loaned a dry shirt to replace my wet one, and sunscreen and sunglasses were also generously shared. Though I was mostly too sick to eat, my crewmates, new and old alike, pressed snacks into my hands.
“Establishing relationships, adding that human element back in, helped us to not dwell on what had happened and bring back a positive attitude. I think that had a huge impact on both crews,” says Austin. “Understanding the human side of things is so important.”
7. Find Your Buddy
“The buddy boat concept was critical for our situation,” says Eric. “The rescuing boat has all the stress and all the people onboard, and they may continue to need help as they’re getting safely back to shore.” The Archambault 40 Banter—owned and raced by the Gimple family, who are close friends of the Alliance crew—was close enough to respond to the sinking vessel and offer assistance. The plan was that they would take on half of the Alliance crew, but a popped tube in the liferaft made that impossible. Still, their role wasn’t done. They stayed close by Celidh for the next 52 hours.
“We had Banter right by our side and had open comms with them throughout the race,” says Austin. “Had we broken something else, we knew that they were there, knew our situation, and could’ve gotten to us quickly if we needed help. It’s OK to ask for help.”
“Ceilidh knew to ask for a buddy boat, and also Banter with their Coast Guard background was not going to leave our side,” remembers Mary. “I don’t know if every other boat would’ve thought of that, but having support after our crew was recovered mattered.”
8. Final Takeaways
“Pack your toothbrush in the ditch bag,” says Mary. “Bring a change of dry clothes. If you’re wet and can’t dry out, you’re cold. And the importance of emergency water cannot be overstated. You can survive a few days without food, but you need water. We stored ours in bricks that weren’t too big to take with us, which was essential.”
“After the 2022 tragedy, the race committee really stepped up their expectations for boat communications, and that benefitted us,” Eric adds. “The response from the other competitors was excellent.”
“Don’t let things snowball out of control,” Austin says. “When Ceilidh was under stress from the conditions and the extra weight, things started to break. It’s so important not skimp on parts and safety gear. If we hadn’t had a drill onboard, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“Preparedness isn’t being prepared for one thing, it’s being prepared for any situation,” adds RJ. Having strong foundational skills and a consistently high standard of seamanship is the only way to ensure that those basics will be rock solid when the unexpected happens.
November/December 2024
