Survival in the savage sea

In a seascape reminiscent of the 'perfect storm', a boat overturns and the captain and first mate are left fighting for their lives

In May 2005, Captain Tom Tighe and first mate Loch Reidy welcomed three others onboard the Almeisan for a five-day sailing trip from Connecticut off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. to Bermuda. On day four, a violent storm struck, and massive wave would sweep the captain and first mate out to sea, leaving the three inexperienced crew members fighting for their lives while Reidy and Tighe fought to stay alive in the raging water. In this exclusive extract from Michael Tougias's book, Overboard!, the perfect storm has just struck

Rogue Wave

When the big rogue wave sent the Almeisan careening on her side, Tom was flung so hard into the sea his safety tether broke the jackline encircling the boat that it was attached to. Loch, who was in the raft, never saw the wave or even heard its roar, but he felt its power as if being hit by a speeding car. He was forced downward several feet and felt a yank on his safety harness, and then no tension at all.

In that instant he knew the worst had happened; the line encircling the raft had broken, because when the sea finally released Loch, he came gasping to the surface, completely outside the raft.

Fighting to keep his head above the churning foam, Loch took everything in at once; he saw the wind-driven life raft blown into the darkness, and saw the Almeisan—eerie lights still shining on the mizzenmast—careening wildly, seventy feet away, and getting smaller and smaller as the seas put distance between them. There was simply no way he could swim and keep up with the vessel, which made a much larger target for the wind to push.

Now Loch shouts toward the vessel, but has little hope the crew will hear him. A wave of despair envelops him, as he considers how utterly alone he is in the black abyss of raging water. Suddenly he hears an answering yell, but it’s coming from a different direction than the boat. He swims toward the voice, but the colossal walls of water pummel him, driving him several feet down before he kicks to the surface. Loch coughs up seawater, catches his breath, and shouts, “I’m here! I’m here!”

Again he hears the shout and knows it’s Tom, also in the water. The two men claw at the seas, desperately swimming toward each other before they become further separated in the abyss. They are exhausting themselves with the effort, but nothing else matters at this moment.

Suddenly, as Loch emerges on the other side of a wave, he hears Tom shout from nearby, and there he is, no more than five feet away, doing his best to close the gap between them. A wave buries them both, but when they fight to the surface they clutch at each other’s safety harness, not wanting to be yanked apart in the coal black night. Each man clips his tether to the other’s harness. Approximately ten feet of line is between the two men.

As the waves pummel the men, sometimes they surface side by side, but other times they end up on opposite sides of the wave, and are dunked separately by the next one. The ten feet of tether is jerked violently, wrenching their bodies unexpectedly. They feel like yoyos on a string, and they pray the tethers will hold.

Each man has a bulky, orange-coloured foam life vest strapped over his foul-weather gear, but still the waves drive them downward. They quickly realize that when they come to the surface they must orient themselves and locate the direction of the next oncoming wave so that they can turn their heads away. When they don’t, they take a tremendous slap in the face as their heads are whipped backward and water is forced up their nostrils.

Both men search the darkness for the Almeisan, and they glimpse the masthead light, and then the spreader lights, now more than two hundred feet away. Then the boat disappears from view, blocked by a thirty-foot wall of water. Both men shout for help. When they get their next glimpse at the vessel’s lights, they stare in utter despair, recognizing that the boat is further away, far beyond the sound of their yells.

From his time on watch, Tom knows his boat is drifting at three knots, and he watches the masthead light vanish into the gloom, gone from view for good. Waves slam the two men every twenty to thirty seconds, and between each assault, when they are in the same trough, they have a few seconds to shout.

“Just hang on!” shouts Loch. “The Coast Guard will have heard our EPIRB!”

Neither man, however, kids himself about help coming any time soon. Fighting the seas takes incredible energy, and both men have already spent the prior two days working round the clock with almost no sleep; they are bone tired already. Tom in particular has been under incredible strain, first fretting over the crew’s comfort, then their
safety, and finally their very lives. Ironically, he might not even have deployed the life raft if he were alone on the boat or if it were just he and Loch on board. Abandoning ship meant the end of the Almeisan, and the Almeisan was part of his very soul. If it was just his own life in danger, he may have chosen to risk it, and tried to save his boat.

But with crew on board, the Almeisan had to take a back-seat to their safety, and he felt the risk of staying on the damaged boat was greater than in the life raft. And now the very worst possible string of events has happened. Tom knows he might die but he’s still worried about the crew, alone on a sinking boat with no life raft. He says a silent prayer for their safety. Tom turns his attention to his own situation and takes stock of what he has on his body. It’s not much: a T-shirt, pants, foul-weather pants and coat, safety harness, and life preserver with a three-inch strobe light attached to it. He’s thankful for the strobe and the life preserver, but he can’t help but think about one thing he doesn’t have—drinking water. Dehydration will set in quickly, particularly with the way the men are expending energy and ingesting seawater. They’re already thirsty and craving fresh water.

If they should survive the beating inflicted by the waves, Tom knows hypothermia is the other major concern. The temperature of the ocean is 73 degrees (Fahrenheit), thanks to the Gulf Stream, and while that may sound warm, it’s far lower than the body temperature a person needs to maintain for survival. A healthy body temperature is 98.6 degrees, and immersion in water colder than that lowers the body’s warmth. This process occurs much more quickly than many people would expect: water sucks away body heat twenty-four times faster than air of the same temperature.

Every individual’s tolerance to hypothermia is different, and charts reflect this wide swing, with the U.S. Coast Guard hypothermia chart showing that in 70- to 80-degree water, the time of survival ranges from as little as three hours to “indefinite,” with indefinite assuming calm seas. This same chart, however, shows an equally disturbing category, labelled “exhaustion or unconsciousness.”

In water temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees, a person will succumb to exhaustion or unconsciousness in three to twelve hours. In these unforgiving seas, that’s as good as a death sentence because in total exhaustion or unconsciousness neither Loch nor Tom will be able to keep his head above the foaming ocean’s surface.

Death may be officially attributed to drowning, but the hypothermia will be the genesis. Other than their life vests, the two men do have a couple of things working in their favour that may buy them an extra hour or two.

Their wet foul-weather jackets and pants—in addition to regular pants and T-shirts—will help slow the process of hypothermia by trapping a bit of water warmed by the body close to the skin. Any extra ounce of fat will also help insulate the body, and this is the one time in Tom and Loch’s life that being a few pounds overweight will actually protect their health. (Body mass plays an important part in delaying hypothermia, which is why adults usually outlive children trapped in the same chilling situation.) Whenever they can, the two men huddle together for a bit of shared body warmth, although with the seas moving so violently, this warming of the water between them might be marginal at best.

The body itself will fight the cold, by generating heat production through shivering and shaking, but this requires energy, and the men were fatigued even before they hit the water. And of course they are struggling with the waves, expending vigour by the second. Not only must they keep their heads pointed away from each oncoming torrent, they must also claw to the surface after being buried by breaking waves. Instead of conserving energy by just floating, they have no choice but to kick, squirm, and thrash against each avalanching wave—waves that they cannot even see in the dark, but only hear their menacing roar.

Although total exhaustion or unconsciousness may be a few hours away, the men will be feeling the effects of hypothermia much sooner as the body’s core temperature drops to 95 degrees. A rigidity of their muscles leading to dexterity problems will make their battle all the more difficult and they might become incoherent or fall into a stupor, which will lead to drowning long before the death stage of hypothermia.

The outlook for survival until morning is fair; the outlook for the next twelve hours is grim.

You can buy Overboard! on Amazon; visit the author at: www.michaeltougias.com