This story saddens me; it will be interesting to watch developments.
Tar Baby II dismasted
It is always risky and a bit presumptuous to second-guess somebody out there, yet how else do the rest of us learn without going through it themselves? For this reason, I think that we should revisit the issue of dismastings in the middle of a huge ocean.
I am guessing that the trawler that picked up this couple chose not to drop them off in Niue because there is no safe harbor or anchorage there. Fishing boats full of catch can't afford to spend a day or more hanging around waiting for the seas to calm enough that they can offload two people.
I don't understand, though, why they didn't try to make it to port someplace on their own. As you see from the photos, and the comments made in the above article, the boat seems to be in pretty good shape except for no mast. I don't see much of a way to jury-rig a mast - no whisker pole or spinnaker pole in evidence, but what looks like the boom lying on deck. With a little fuel (see those 6 or 8 5-gallon diesel jerry jugs on deck?) they could have motored easily to Niue, picked up a mooring and jury-rigged a sail to get them to Tonga or Fiji. Long, slow, but they would still have their boat.
There is no question that a sailboat without a mast is an uncomfortable place to be in the middle of an ocean. However, there are ways to minimize the discomfort until a sail can be jury-rigged. Trailing a drogue, which could be anything, including an old sail and line, would help to keep the boat stern-to the seas and swells, thus minimizing the roll that is so uncomfortable in a sailboat without sails and mast.
Did they lose everything overboard and that made it more difficult? Losing their bowsprit and with it their anchor and rode would have been scary and disheartening. Seeing how high the boat is riding, they don't seem to have any water in their bilge.
I don't think that they lost the rig in bad weather. If they had, I would have expected the decks to have been swept clean of all those jerry jugs tied to the rail. All that junk on deck would have been, for us, an unacceptable hazard, but would have stood them in good stead if they had to motor to someplace, including Niue or Tonga.
As an aside, that Westsail 32 has a displacement of 10 tons. Our Jeanneau Sun Fizz, 8 feet longer, had a displacement of 7.5 tons.
We have a little experience with others' dismastings, and how they did.
Wannago, Lowell North's Tayana, was dismasted between California and French Polynesia. They jury-rigged a sail, got some extra fuel along the way, and made it to Tahiti where they were able to have a new mast shipped in.
We befriended a couple on their Moody 42 (? might have been bigger - long time ago), Songlines, who were dismasted between Fiji and Vanuatu, motored it to Vanuatu where they jury-rigged a mast and a borrowed staysail and continued on to Australia, 1028 nm away. Peter found his purpose in life helping this couple. They got a piece of galvanized pipe and some galvanized wire from the local electric utility company (this was discarded stuff - wire drum ends too short for anything on land, for example), they did a great job of setting it up. Not particularly attractive perhaps, but it worked.
In the Gambier Islands of French Polynesia we met a German single-hander who lost his rudder halfway to Cape Horn. No EPIRB, little fuel, and a long way from any shipping lanes or cruising routes, he jury-rigged a rudder and spent several months sailing himself back to the Gambiers where he could build a new rudder. This was, to me, the scariest of the stories we heard.
I do believe that Tar Baby II might have been brought to safety with little aid, but I don't have all the information. Were they without VHF radio communication? Did they have backup GPS and paper charts? What do you think would have helped here?
Threaded Mode
