PWAC Victoria: Ian Douglas, Writing Sample

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The Long Way Home

by Ian Douglas © 1997

What happens when a rogue wave turns your world upside down? First published in Pacific Yachting, Feb. 1998.

A subtle change in the storm song disturbed Toni Greenhalgh's "will this watch ever end?" musings. The tall South African huddled in the cockpit of Nutshell, a Sampson ferrocement cutter 40 days out from Guam. She had been thinking how strange it felt to be homeward bound to a land she had never seen. Her fiancé, expecting more wind, had just shortened sail, then ducked below to put on the kettle. This was their first passage together.

Greenhalgh had been sailing in Hawaii aboard another boat when she met Barry Squirrell, an ex-navy photographer/advertising sales rep/museum designer with a diamond stud in his left ear. In a scene right out of As the Anchor Drags (the seagoing saga of cruising life), he pursued her across the Pacific to Guam. Finally she had given up and moved aboard, bringing along her favourite set of golf clubs.

Now, they were in the thick of their third storm in a week. Although they'd been relying on the Aries self-steering, helping only on the occasional downwind surf, her memory of rogue waves she'd seen briefly while bashing the wrong way 'round the Horn in a multi-hull lurked at the back of her mind. Turning around to avoid any more moisture seeping into her already clammy raingear, she saw what had disturbed her end-of-watch meditation. Her mouth went dry. Staring at the wall of water freight training down on her, she hugged the wheel, and screamed at Squirrell to "hang on."

The monster wave spun and rolled Nutshell. Everything grew suddenly green and cold.

Unclipping her harness in the awful silence, Greenhalgh broke the surface near the overturned hull but she only managed a single gulp of life before the fibreglass dinghy slammed into her. Dazed, she grabbed hold of the self-steering, struggling to regain her breath. Through salty tears she followed the culprit as it disappeared from sight. Tracing the ragged edge of a broken tooth with her tongue, she flinched as another large object bore down on her. Realizing that it was the soft-pack liferaft, ripped from its home on the handrails, she snagged it before it could drift free. She tied the raft to the self-steering and focused on her situation--2,700 miles from Guam, 900 miles north of Hawaii. All alone. It felt hopeless.

Inside the upside-down world of the Nutshell, Squirrell awoke to find he was kneeling on the skylight, staring into the depths. All he could remember was hearing Greenhalgh yell, grabbing for a handhold, then waking up, disorientated and in pain. Struggling slowly back to the main hatch, he opened it and swam toward the surface, unaware that ten minutes had passed since the rollover. "I'm so happy to see you," sobbed Toni.

At that moment, the mast broke below the first spreaders and Nutshell righted herself, trapping Greenhalgh's leg in the self-steering. Desperation depresses pain. Although Squirrell was seriously hurt--crushed vertebrae, collarbone cracked in three places, all the ribs on his left side busted (injuries that a doctor later would say would have landed a lengthy stay in intensive care)--he found himself being boosted up on the self-steering by Greenhalgh, who was also struggling to keep her head above the waves. Squirrell ended up jumping up and down on the Aries before it finally broke, releasing Greenhalgh's leg and allowing her to clamber up beside him. Once she was aboard they held each other and surveyed the damage. "I couldn't believe my eyes," said Squirrell. "It looked like a knife had cleaned everything off above the deck."

Down below wasn't much better. Three-and-a-half feet of debris-strewn water sloshed from one side of the cabin to the other every time they wallowed in the 15-20' seas. Would the boat go over again? Frantically they started pitching over all the sodden books, boxes--anything to lighten the load. In that first panic their Nautical Almanac and Sight Reduction Tables went overboard, something they would later regret, since the GPS had disappeared along with their hard dodger.

Plastic containers--peanut butter, cooking oil, dishwashing soap, bleach--had all broken, creating a bilge bouillabaisse. Because stray lentils jammed the hand pump after only a few strokes, Greenhalgh bailed with an ice-cream bucket for the next six days.

Before the rollover, her reaction to the rough seas had made them realize she was pregnant. Squirrell was in shock--he kept asking where they were--and in such pain that Greenhalgh was terrified he might have a heart attack, especially since he had already survived triple bypass surgery. "And each time the rest of the rigging banged against the hull, my heart would stop," he remembered.

With Squirrell directing--"he was the brains, I was the brawn"--Greenhalgh started clearing the rigging. She wasn't able to use the bolt cutters, so she used the hacksaw to cut the broken rigging free. It took three days. At the last moment the liferaft line became entangled, so when the mess of rigging came free and sank, the liferaft went too. She finished the day by falling overboard, and subsequently spent one of the coldest nights of her life, huddled with Squirrell.

Survival was brutally basic. Their main batteries had been ruined, so they lived without electric lights. They had a flashlight, which they had saved for signaling, only to find saltwater corrosion had killed it. On the second day, however, Greenhalgh found a kerosene lantern that had miraculously survived the rollover, and they jury-rigged it with an ice-cream bucket to serve as a combination running light and cabin light.

They lived in the aft cabin for six days, eating cold food from label-less cans. "Let's see what the God of Tins has brought us today," Greenhalgh joked later. They finally got the propane and oil stove going and had their first hot meal. When Squirrell strung up the sodden rolls of toilet paper above the stove to dry and Greenhalgh started to laugh, they realized their sense of humour was intact. For the first time they began to feel they had a chance. Another unexpected boost to their morale was a seal, which showed up soon after the mishap, and would visit them on and off for the next 1,500 miles.

But they were both in rough shape. He was out of it, living on Demerol and Tylenol, and she was suffering from saltwater sores from standing in the water, bailing. Under his direction, she removed all the fittings from the boom, then rigged baby stays and a steel cable from the top of remaining mast stub to the anchor winch. On the sixteenth day, after two attempts, they finally got 10 feet of mast upright. They cut the spare mainsail at the second reef point, cut the staysail at its reef point, and prepared to use the rest of the gathered mainsail as a downwind drifter. Finally they were ready, but nature had more surprises. For the next 26 days they drifted in thick fog. "One of the days was like the Twilight Zone," said Greenhalgh. "At one point the sea was covered with so many jellyfish it looked like crushed ice."

They began to worry about running out of food and water. The water in their tanks was tainted with salt but drinkable, and when it ran low they caught rainwater. During one rainsquall they caught 27 gallons, but twice were down to barely a gallon before it started to rain. They had left Guam on May 8, and by July 26 had little water and only enough food left for six meals, when they saw a light astern. Responding to their flare, a Cheoy Lee from California named Mirage came alongside, sailed by Laurie and Tom Swann and their son Nick.

"Tom barely introduced himself before he passed over a beer, saying, 'you might enjoy one of these,'" Squirrell reported, full of admiration for the camaraderie of the cruising community. Mirage offered to buddy-boat to Alaska, but Nutshell's crew declined their kind offer because they would still have to find a way down to Vancouver Island. They did gratefully accept a month's food and water, and a time check and confirmation of their position. The latter was disappointing, because it showed they were 600 miles further from shore than they thought.

"We had a Davis sextant aboard," Squirrell said, "and I had taken a celestial course through the Bluewater Cruising Association, so I was able to use the Davis emergency tables but had a mix-up with the time." Mirage also promised to contact the Coast Guard when they arrived in Alaska, and to notify Greenhalgh's and Squirrell's parents that Nutshell's landfall had been unexpectedly delayed.

The first 2,700 miles had taken forty days; the next 2,100 miles took 103 days because of unsettled weather patterns caused by El Niño. On August 11, Squirrell was "working a noon sight and out of the corner of my eye I caught a tuna boat coming alongside." The battered Nutshell had sailed into the midst of the tuna fleet, "and at one point 10 tuna boats, including the Leigh Dawn with Stan and Tracy Lambert from Campbell River, surrounded us," said Squirrell.

One of the boats launched a dinghy and went round collecting food donations. In addition, the fishermen lent them a handheld GPS, a handheld ICOM VHF, a box of books, and a portable emergency strobe. The tuna fleet wanted them to stay with them, but both Squirrell and Greenhalgh felt they could make a safe landfall. They were especially grateful for the loan of the handheld GPS, since the sun disappeared once they began to close with the Vancouver Island coast.

Coastal air patrol spotted them and arranged for the freighter Westwood Cleo to drop them food and diesel for their heater. When they were only 196 miles off the Straits of Juan de Fuca, on course for Victoria, they were hit by a southeaster that blew them up island. Squirrell expected a northwest wind to build after the system had passed, and while they were waiting, the container ship Sealand Kodiak contacted them to see if they needed assistance. The Sealand Kodiak talked over Nutshell's condition with the Coast Guard and, since the weather looked like it was deteriorating, the Coast Guard arranged for the John P. Tully to take them in tow. The Tully found them about 44 miles off Winter Harbour in the early hours of September 26. After the Coast Guard pulled alongside to pick them up, the Tully jogged along, while the battered Nutshell ghosted behind at three knots.

"It was amazing aboard the Tully, hot showers, good food and super people." Greenhalgh laughingly admitted to the crew that, although the table groaned with food, she still craved a peanut butter sandwich. And even though they were exhausted, she and Squirrell found they were waking up every three hours, ready to go on watch. At dawn the skipper put two crewmembers aboard and towed Nutshell into Winter Harbour.

Later, Greenhalgh and Squirrell couldn't say enough about the captain and crew of the Tully, who even gave them a couple of boxes of food when they left, since they knew it would be a while before the couple could get to Port Hardy for groceries. The community of Winter Harbour also took them under their wing, offering them places to stay, and even became part of the wedding party when the couple were married aboard the Northern Enchantress in Port Hardy Harbour.

While Nutshell was tied up at the old fishplant in Winter Harbour, the couple waited in Campbell River to "launch the baby." They plan to spend a year settling into life with a child, write a book about their experience (Greenhalgh wrote a children's book before leaving South Africa) and resume their travels on Nutshell.

Launchings
Roland Flip Squirrell was born
November 20,1997 at Campbell River.

Ian Douglas
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Last updated: May 19, 2004 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/dougla03.html