Stus-List Re: C&C 121 in a pickle

[Marek Dziedzic via CnC-List]

Is it just me or recently, some emails from this list started arriving with 
HTML attachments, instead of the straight text in the body of the message?

Marek
Ottawa ON



Sent from my Android-based can on a string



 Original message 
From: Randy Stafford via CnC-List 
Date: 2022-02-01 17:32 (GMT-05:00)
To: Stus-List 
Cc: Randy Stafford 
Subject: Stus-List Re: C&C 121 in a pickle

Stus-List Re: C&C 121 in a pickle

[Randy Stafford via CnC-List]

Hey Listers,

Remember this story?  Well, it got written up in this month’s issue of 
Caribbean Compass.  Starting on p.18 of 
https://www.caribbeancompass.com/online/compass_online.pdf.

Cheers,
Randy

> On Dec 4, 2021, at 5:05 PM, Randy Stafford  wrote:
> 
> Correct.  There were no medical emergencies.  The boat was afloat and not 
> leaking.  It had propulsion and it had steerage.  If assistance had not 
> arrived, the first dire issue they might have faced was running out of 
> drinking water.  The second might have been running out of food.  Once the 
> seas calmed enough to dive the prop, they were able to get back to a better 
> state (esp. since they had a watermaker on board).  A third issue they were 
> facing was running out of fuel to make landfall before running out of food.  
> So, a question to ponder, was this an emergency, or just a major and scary 
> inconvenience?
> 
> I had to go through that thought process on an offshore passage earlier this 
> year.  The boat I was on had a multi-cause steering failure in the middle of 
> the night, that required use of the emergency tiller while awaiting daylight 
> to fix a problem.  But we were afloat, not leaking, had propulsion and 
> steerage, no medical problems, and enough water, food, and fuel to make 
> landfall.  Not an emergency, but an exhausting and “exciting” night of 
> inconvenience.
> 
> Cheers,
> Randy
> 
>> On Dec 4, 2021, at 3:37 PM, dwight veinot via CnC-List 
>> mailto:cnc-list@cnc-list.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Bad as it sounds everybody stayed above the water. Right. That is what a 
>> boat is for in simplest terms
>> 
>> On Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 6:30 PM Randy Stafford via CnC-List 
>> mailto:cnc-list@cnc-list.com>> wrote:
>> Listers,
>> 
>> Here’s an overdue report on this situation.  Basically a tale of warning 
>> about what can go wrong offshore, with potentially very serious consequences.
>> 
>> By coincidence a few weeks ago I came into contact on Facebook with one of 
>> Calypso’s crew, a retired pediatrician.  We subsequently spoke on the phone, 
>> and she documented her experience on her Facebook timeline, which I’ll quote 
>> below.
>> 
>> Calypso’s owner and captain is a 75-year old man who’d never been offshore.  
>> He found passage crew on findacrew.net , and they too 
>> had never been offshore (and in two cases had little sailing experience).
>> 
>> The boat experienced a sequence of cascading problems on the passage, which 
>> put it and its crew in a very serious situation: no electricity, no engine, 
>> low fresh water, and broken forestay many hundreds of miles offshore.  The 
>> sequence started with problems furling an asym on a top-down furler.  That 
>> somehow caused problems with the genoa furler too: the genoa wouldn’t furl 
>> all the way in or out.  That in turn contributed to the forestay snapping 
>> when the wind picked up.  When that happened, the crew lashed the genoa down 
>> the length of the side deck, and fouled the prop with sheets or lashing 
>> lines.  The prop was fouled hard enough, in forward gear, that it wasn’t 
>> possible to shift to neutral.  So they couldn’t run the engine.  So they got 
>> down to 4% battery.  They had to shut off all electrical loads including 
>> radio, radar, GPS/AIS, lights, watermaker, and refrigerator.  They had to 
>> drift for two days waiting for seas to calm enough to dive the prop.  They 
>> lost refrigerated food and got down to 11% fresh water (with apparently no 
>> bottled water aboard).
>> 
>> If they had not been able to get off distress calls on their electronics and 
>> satellite phone before shutting down, they would have been in serious 
>> trouble.  Fortunately two other boats received notifications of Calypso’s 
>> distress and came to assist, accompanying the disabled boat for many days.  
>> They lent water and fuel, support and advice.  One of those boats was a 
>> Leopard 40 named Nobody’s Home in the Salty Dogs rally to Antigua, whose 
>> delivery captain was a man named Vinny, who is a friend of the delivery 
>> captain Scott of the boat I was on (a Fountaine Pajot Saona 47 named Quite 
>> The Catch).  We first heard about this whole situation when Vinny texted 
>> Scott via satphone.
>> 
>> Calypso departed from Hampton, VA on Saturday October 30th (day 1 for them) 
>> as part of the Salty Dogs rally.  My boat departed Newport, RI on Monday 
>> November 1st, bound for the USVI (not part of the rally).  Calypso's 
>> forestay snapped on their day 7 or 8: Saturday November 7th or Sunday 
>> November 8th.  By that time there was a strong storm happening between the 
>> east coast and Bermuda, which would slam New England several days later as a 
>> nor’easter packing hurricane-strength winds. By Friday November 6th Chris 
>> Parker was advising all boats in the vicinity to get as far south and east 
>> as possible, as quickly as possible.  At that time, Quite The Catch was 
>> approaching Bermuda, and we were seeing