Received: from hplms26.hpl.hp.com by opus.hpl.hp.com with SMTP (1.37.109.8/15.5+ECS 3.3+HPL1.1) id AA07005; Mon, 19 Sep 1994 05:22:06 -0700 Return-Path: <westes@usc.com-DeleteThis> Received: from uucp4.netcom.com by hplms26.hpl.hp.com with SMTP (1.36.108.4/15.5+ECS 3.3+HPL1.1S) id AA07503; Mon, 19 Sep 1994 05:22:32 -0700 Received: from localhost by netcomsv.netcom.com with UUCP (8.6.4/SMI-4.1) id FAA20807; Mon, 19 Sep 1994 05:08:39 -0700 Received: by usc.com (NX5.67d/NX3.0M) id AA04059; Mon, 19 Sep 94 05:04:27 -0700 From: Will Estes <westes@usc.com-DeleteThis> Message-Id: <9409191204.AA04059@usc.com-DeleteThis> Subject: Rescue At Third Avenue To: wind_talk@opus.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis (Windsurfing Mailing List) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 05:04:26 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 13743
I plan on posting this to rec.windsurfing in the next few
days. If anyone has any comments or additions, please send
them and I will incorporate them. Maybe we can get parts of
this into the rescue FAQ.
-- Thanks, Will Estes Internet: westes@usc.com-DeleteThis U.S. Computer Saratoga, CA 95070Text follows:
Having read Ken Poulton's recent account of his rescue on the San Francisco Bay, and having participated in a similar situation for a different windsurfer on September 10, 1994, I am posting to urge sailors who sail the open ocean or large exposed bodies of water to carry the right gear with them.
What I hope to show by the end of this post is that a few items in your kit can make a big difference to your rescue. And, further, what you do as a person on shore participating in a rescue can make a big difference too.
September 10, 1994 was a truly epic day on the San Francisco Bay. As the following synopsis of the wind that afternoon shows, the wind was gusting to as high as 35 knots:
94/09/10-1350 SoSF_SBrMt 58 . 300 22 28 . . x 94/09/10-1455 SoSF_SBrMt 59 . 310 21 30 . . x 94/09/10-1550 SoSF_SBrMt 58 . 300 20 . . . x 94/09/10-1650 SoSF_SBrMt 57 . 300 30 35 . . x 94/09/10-1750 SoSF_SBrMt 56 . 310 21 34 . . x 94/09/10-1852 SoSF_SBrMt 55 . 310 22 27 . . x
Those of us who sailed that Saturday know that the above reports are under-stated. The wind was very consistently going over 30 knots near the San Francisco Airport. At 170 pounds, I was getting seriously worked on a 4.2 bump-and-jump Northwave Tri-Lite sail and 8'4" board, and I feel I would have been getting worked on even a 3.7 sail.
I was sailing at Third Avenue that day, and I had some serious concerns that in the strong flood a missed jibe would send my rig hurling downwind and down-current without me. Even in the flood, there were five-foot swells with evil curling crests that were very hard to ride over on the inside. In the channel, there were six-foot swells and lots of three-and-four foot voodoo swells. Most of my runs to channel left me exhausted, and being out there two or three miles out, alone in these conditions, quickly intimidated me and left me constantly scrambling back for the re-assurance of the shoreline. To be honest, this was not a day to be out there alone at all. It was definitely a buddy-sailing day.
Well, enough about me, because this story is not about me. Another net-sailor, who has asked to remain anonymous, broke his mast out on the far side of the channel. That left him probably three-to-four miles out from shore. There was a strong flood still under way at the time, so there was a real chance of him getting swept under the San Mateo Bridge. A tow in these conditions was not a real option. He was with a friend, and they attempted to try the old Robby Naish trick: reverse the broken part of the mast and stick the tip into the base. This turned his 14' mast into an 11' mast, and he says that he could not get any tension on the sail with such a short mast. So, lacking any other options, he tied up his gear and started paddling. His friend went to shore to call the Coast Guard.
What followed was pretty educational, and pretty scary. The sailor's friend had sailed straight to the fisherman's peer by the bridge and placed an emergency call to the Coast Guard or police (probably a 911 call). As it turns out, this was a mistake that cost us some time. If the sailor had come to the beach we could have gotten some sailors out there to look for this guy and stick with him. As things turned out, a Foster City police car showed up on the beach around 6:15 p.m., and the officer started asking sailors who were packing up whether anyone was missing. Well, naturally, we didn't know anything about a missing sailor, but we took his question seriously enough to help him take a look.
Several guys on the beach had binoculars, and they started to scan the horizon. At first I thought that this was a pretty empty gesture. How could we possibly see a downed sailor out in the middle of a huge expanse of water, three miles off-shore, on a day when the whole Bay was an explosion of whitecaps? To my amazement, one the spotters found the downed sailor paddling on his board. The spotter used to have a job as a spotter for Vela, and I was really impressed that this guy had located the downed sailor at all.
Having spotted the sailor, we now knew we had a problem. He was really far out, and there was no way he could get back before it would get dark. By this time the Coast Guard Auxiliary had joined us on the beach, and they radioed back "We won't need a chopper; just send the boat." To be honest, I thought that was a pretty big mistake, because I did not see how a boat could find him in time before the sun set. But I did not see it as my place to question his judgement, so I let it slide. As luck would have it, we got two choppers anyway. :) Most of these rescues are somewhat comical ventures, as you have about four or five different agencies all trying to coordinate over one unsecured radio channel, and apparently they don't always coordinate so quickly.
Here is where things get interesting. The first chopper on the scene was from some South Bay emergency rescue agency. They flew North of the bridge and could not see the sailor. They started to fly parallel patterns to the bridge, and they still could not see the sailor. We started kibitzing with the pilot by radio: "Move North" "No, you are too far North, move South" "No, you are on the wrong side of the bridge." All during this time we were keeping the downed sailor spotted by binoculars. On several occasions, the copter went directly over him. They still could not see him. Here we were three miles away and we could see the guy through binoculars, but a pilot directly overhead could not see him at all. As things turned out, this chopper never saw the downed sailor.
About this time, I learned the first counter-intuitive lesson of this day:
It is easier to see a downed sailor miles away on the horizon using good binoculars than it is to see that sailor when you are directly over him in an airplane or chopper.
I have tried to reason out why this would be true, and the best theory I can come up with is that when you are looking on the horizon, the entire ocean/bay is compressed into a very small area. Any abnormality is easy to register, because the amount of extraneous information that your brain has to deal with is small. But (apparently) when you are directly overhead in a chopper, your eyes need to process a huge expanse of water. Suddenly your ability to detect abnormalities on the water is hampered just by the sheer volume of information that you need to absorb.
After about five minutes of fruitless searching, in comes the Coast Guard chopper, marching in over the mountains from the Pacific Ocean and in over our site to the bridge. Okay, we are thinking, the pros are here. I can hear the calvary blowing its horns now. The pilot starts his search, but he cannot see the downed sailor. He starts to fly erratically in the vicinity of the bridge, so we start to play the same game with this pilot that we did with the last one. It is now about 10 minutes until darkness, and this is starting to get a little too close for comfort.
To make the story short, the chopper finally saw him, but only after we talked him directly to the right place. He flew directly over the downed sailor two or three times and never saw him.
Well, I learned a lot from this rescue, and I've learned a lot hearing of other rescues, and here are my thoughts:
- Carry a strobe light. Far from being an optional item, a strobe is really your only chance of ever being rescued if you get caught out at night or too near dusk. In the case of the rescue I described, if the downed sailor had a strobe near sunset, the choppers would have flown straight to him. If you have ever seen a strobe work at night, they can be seen immediately from miles away. Without one, you are on your own.
- Carry binoculars in your car. If someone comes into the beach reporting a downed sailor, try to spot him from shore with the binoculars. With a strong current, the sailor will drift fast, and as this story shows, you may be the difference between finding the downed sailor or not finding him at all.
- If you come into shore to get a fin or new boom for a downed sailor, find someone else on shore to spot him for you. At least as many times as not, when you return with the gear to the downed sailor, he won't be where you remember leaving him. He will have drifted in the current, and your odds of finding him on your board are very slim. If someone can keep him sighted from shore, you at least don't lose contact with him if a rescue is required.
- Wear a wetsuit that is too warm for the conditions that you are in. Note I did not say wear one that is right for the conditions; I said wear one that is too warm. If you sail the ocean or the San Francisco Bay, a 4/3 is a must-have item. You just don't realize how cold you will get, and how quickly, when you are forced to remain immersed in 55 degree water. Right around 7:00 p.m. on the day of the rescue, the wind turned very cold on the beach. I was wearing four layers of clothing, and I was still getting hypothermic. The sailor out there was wearing a 3/2, and I frankly don't think his chances would have been good staying in the water from 7:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. (or however long it would take to paddle into shore if we hadn't gotten him out).
Particularly in Spring, Winter, and Fall, the temperature can turn very cold without much warning. If you sail a location where you can be stranded on open water, you should be wearing a suit that will keep you alive in the water overnight. Wear the suit that is right for the worst case, not the one that makes you most comfortable in the best case. And you jibe masters who wear water-skiing outfits on the Bay because you don't plan on getting wet should do some serious soul-searching about just how immortal you really are. Earlier this year we had another sailor lose his board in a strong flood when his mast base broke. He was wearing a shorty and was forced to backstroke all the way to the San Mateo bridge. By some miracle, he found a maintenance boat under one of the spans, broke into it, and then radioed for help. He was seriously hypothermic by the time he got to the bridge. He was one lucky camper to get out of that one alive.
Particularly important is carrying a hood in your emergency pack. O'Neill makes a model that is a full-size cap that you can roll up into a very small space. A hood is important, because you lose a ton of body heat through your head (you would not think so, but you do).
- If you are going to sail a vast expanse of water, I would argue that a PFD is really an essential item. I allow that like a safety belt, it's a very personal choice. But I think that a PFD gives you a way to conserve energy if you are adrift, and if you lose consciousness periodically because of exhaustion/lack of sleep, the PFD is going to help keep you from drowning.
- Carry a very loud whistle, but don't plan on it being of much use. A theme I hear time and again from people in these situations is that boats and sailors both come within 200 yards of them, but that it is very hard to get their attention. Being seen or heard is very hard.
- Paddling in six foot breaking swell is not going to get you anywhere. If you are three miles out, you need to pursue a different strategy if you want to get back in. If you break a boom, reverse it. If you break a mast, reverse it, and try to sail it. If you cannot sail it, then try to simply crouch down in waterstart position and let yourself get dragged in slowly. The idea is to find any configuration that lets the rig do some work for you, and lets you conserve what energy you have. And almost any configuration where there is even a partial sail is going to be much faster, and less work, than paddling or swimming.
- Having heard from enough of these rescues that it is really hard to keep gear from floating away from you, particularly in stronger winds and current, I am starting to think that some sort of jury-rigged leash, that can be used to tie you to the board when you are down in the water, is a good idea. The 4Knots company in Washington, makers of the 4Knots up-haul, also sell an item named a "Puppy Pull". It's an elastic belt that goes to a metal clip. It is made as a hands-free dog leash, but I've decided it makes a really good board leash as well. You could keep one of these in your fanny pack, and use it to clip right to the board or to the uphaul line.
I don't mean to get anyone scared unnecessarily, but in the areas I am sailing this sort of thing seems to happen with regularity. Of course we all need to learn about self-rescue, but there are cases/conditions in which self-rescue is either not easy or not possible. The moral of the story is that in this sport you - not the Coast Guard, and not your buddy, and not anyone else - YOU - are responsible for your own destiny out there. Don't go out on the ocean or a large bay with the same gear you go out with at your local lake. Think ahead and plan what you need. If you do break down, you want to be the guy who is maybe inconvenienced by having to spend the night on the water. You definitely don't want to be the guy who realizes a few hours after he is down that he is in a struggle for his life. Happy sailing, and be safe.
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