AufundDavon 
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Registriert seit: 02.11.2008
Beiträge: 2
Nachricht senden |  Erstellt am 04.11.2009 - 23:54 |      |
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Ist aber schon alt...
...Klinges went off watch Sunday night, Feb. 18, with the boat sailing through 30-foot swells. "When I woke up [Monday] morning, the waves had exponentially grown, and they were pretty steep because they were pushed by the wind," he says. "Not rollers anymore, [but] long back and steep front. At 10 that morning the waves were getting noticeably steeper, and I was getting apprehensive myself because I could see all around us the waves were breaking everywhere."
"As we progressed, the front approached, the weather deteriorated, and [the wind] went to 55 knots, gusting to 60, and [up to] 45-foot waves," Templeman recalls. "The problem was that one in 10 waves would crest. By this time we'd seen the weather had deteriorated far more than forecast, so we were heading southeasterly with a 30 percent jib and no mainsail. We had no other option but to run."
Hobley took over the helm in the cockpit - the only steering station on the catamaran and the place where the life raft was stored - at 11 a.m., running in front of the sea and keeping the waves just off the starboard quarter. At times, he took a break and let the windvane or the autopilot do the steering, his crew says. At one point Templeman noted they were doing 22 knots as they raced down a wave, although on a regular basis the boat was making 10 to 12 knots. Everywhere around them were 35-foot seas, along with the occasional breaking 45-footer.
As Monday wore on, "the water was screaming, and the wind was screaming," says Klinges. "It reminded me of being in the mountains when the wind blows the snow in streaks."
Templeman and Klinges were in the saloon at around 2 p.m. with Hobley, who had turned on the autopilot and taken a break from steering. Klinges was on a couch on the port side and Templeman was standing to starboard when, through the sliding glass doors that separated them from the cockpit, they saw another 45-footer approach.
"I could see a huge one crest and break on a direct line for us," Klinges says. "Pretty soon it came up, a 45-foot wall, straight up and down white with foam. It broke on our starboard quarter, blew the hatch cover open, filled up the cockpit, flooded the saloon floor. I was sitting on the saloon couch, so basically I rolled with it."
Earlier in the afternoon, when a similar wave slammed the catamaran from astern, Templeman had been thrown across the saloon and down into the port hull. This time he was putting something away in his stateroom and felt the boat tilt 90 degrees and then slam back down.
"We were probably 5 degrees from flipping over," says Klinges. "After that, I kind of came to the conclusion that if that one wave was there and the wind wasn't letting up . our luck was probably running out." He put on all his ski gear, an extra layer of fleece, his inflatable life jacket and his three-point tether and went to his stateroom forward in the port hull to lie in his bunk.
At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, with squalls of heavy rain that changed the wind angle, Hobley went below, shedding most of his gear except for his thermals and a layer of fleece. With Templeman in the cockpit steering, Hobley got into his bunk, on the opposite side of the boat from Klinges' stateroom. An hour later, at 5 o'clock, Templeman saw the one-in-10 wave, another 45-footer, approach from astern, cresting twice. "The third time, it crested just as we came to the top of it and flipped the catamaran over," he recalls.
Templeman found himself trapped in the inverted cockpit, unable to open the sliding glass doors to the saloon. Klinges, in his port-hull cabin in full foul weather gear, simply walked out of his bunk and onto the overhead as his cocoon turned upside down. As he made his way aft, he encountered Hobley, still only in thermals and fleece. The skipper had taken just enough time to put on his life jacket. The pair went aft to the escape hatch on the hull. Klinges had grabbed the ditch bag, in which the EPIRB was stored, and had it fastened to his harness.
Outside, 35-foot waves attacked the boat relentlessly, funneling between the hulls like racing surf. Klinges popped the escape hatch, reached outside and clipped his tether to a D-ring, then climbed out of the hull, with Hobley right behind. Caught in the water racing between the hulls, Klinges was yanked fore and aft several times, then finally made his way to the bow. He was shaken. The hook on his tether had been bent. He had never been in seas like these.
"Tell me we are going to get out of here!" Klinges shouted to Hobley.
"Absolutely," the skipper shouted into the crewman's face. "We are going to get out of here!"
Now Hobley and Klinges were joined at the bow by Templeman, who had managed to open the sliding doors and get out the escape hatch in the starboard hull. The life raft that had been in the cockpit was nowhere to be seen. Hobley busied himself activating his EPIRB, which was registered to another boat, named Haley. The long EPIRB tether got tangled around him and Klinges, then the tether snapped and the beacon was washed overboard. Meanwhile, Templeman had activated his personal EPIRB. So two signals were being broadcast to search-and-rescue authorities.
About a half-hour after the capsize, Klinges realized that Hobley had no tether, and he hooked the skipper to is own line. "Rather quickly, it became apparent that the skipper wasn't very well-protected," Templeman says. "He started shivering. We were actually sitting [on the catamaran's trampoline] in the water, losing a lot of heat to the water. I suggested that we stand so the water could drain. Me and Kevin stood up" in the lee of one of the catamaran's hulls. "The skipper questioned why we were standing up. He was becoming less and less responsive. We were doing everything to keep him awake . shouting louder and louder to keep him fighting. But it was quite a strain. We were also trying to keep ourselves on the deck."
Then the ditch bag was torn away from Klinges. "The waves were just destroying us, throwing us overboard," he says.
An hour into the ordeal, with dark descending on the Atlantic, the trio saw a light shining on Templeman's EPIRB indicating that its signal had been received on shore. Some time later, Hobley began tearing at his life jacket as if trying to remove it, and he became incoherent. It was around 10 p.m. when a C-130 aircraft arrived on scene. Then a train of huge waves arrived, as well. Templeman was standing next to the hull, and Hobley was between him and Klinges. One of the waves shoved Templeman into Hobley, who in turn slammed into Klinges, knocking him into a cable and rupturing his inflated life jacket.
Between waves, the men saw flares and strobes dropped by the aircraft, and at one point they saw an inflated life raft float by but did not dare swim for it. A subsequent wave washed all three overboard, and when Klinges, pulling on his tether, hauled Hobley back to the boat, he could see the skipper was dead. "His eyes were still opened, and I closed his eyes, and I couldn't believe that," he says. "And the next wave blew us all over, and I pulled in the line, and the only thing there was the life jacket." ...
[Dieser Beitrag wurde am 04.11.2009 - 23:56 von AufundDavon aktualisiert]
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