Dec. 8, 2007 NARC Spam Sunk

NARC Spam Sunk

It was a dark and squally night. Many times the wind swung 360 degrees around the boat, combining with the 15 foot waves to throw the boat about. You could hear the autopilot straining to keep our heading. The highest wind gust was 40 knots, our top boat speed hitting 20 knots. The crew couldn’t sleep, except me, and so all hands were already on deck when Lee the Captain called to triple reef the main and headsail. We had out nothing more than a white lace hanky.

For days now we had managed to stay just ahead of a storm front to the East of us and dodge the worst weather, but not tonight. We got many email reports of boats knocked down, crew members seriously injured and transported by cruise ships to the Caribbean, broken booms, rigging failures etc… Another 10 minutes later it was over and the wind died. Then we started the engine and were under power.

At dawn I arose to find the First Mate Wendy in her bathing suit soaking wet, cleaning up water that had been coming in under the door. The rain drains in the cockpit were blocked, so she took the opportunity to save the rainwater in jugs for cleaning purposes later. As soon as her watch was up she retired to bed to try and catch up on sleep. It had not been a restful night with the boat careening around at high speeds.

I had been on watch only an hour or so and was settling in to start a new book, when Sebastian came up. We spoke quietly about the rainy weather so as not to waken Wendy and Lee when all of a sudden the VHF started screaming “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” The mayday call gave us the position of a boat that had been dismasted and was sinking and was being relayed by one of the ARC boats, Blue Destiny. The position of the sinking boat was 40 miles north of us and 55 miles north of Blue Destine. The name of the sinking boat was Spam and they were not a part of the ARC, which would make them Not ARC or NARC.

Lee sprinted up the companion way when he heard the Mayday. We waited only moments to see if anyone else would respond then we donned life jackets and foulies and sprang into action turning our boat around to the north, and setting sail as fast as we could to the rescue. I, the designated communications officer, let Blue Destiny know we were altering our course.

It took our seasoned crew, only minutes set sail north, as the wind had picked with the rising sun. However we received word from another ARC boat, Regina, that they were within only a few miles and another ARC boat, Navillus had Spam within sight. Soon we were apprised by Regina that the 3 crew members of Spam were rescued by Navillus and all were on their way to St Lucia while watching the hapless Spam sink. ARC Control instructed us to resume our heading for St Lucia.

We later found out that Spam was possibly a home built older plywood catamaran called a Prout Qwest 31. Not only was it dismasted it was holed and so was the life raft the crew jumped into. We are anxious to get to St Lucia and meet up with the crews of Regina and Navillus and get the rest of the story.

Our guess is that many people who can’t afford the entry fee of ARC, plus all of the extra costs of having their required safety equipment, choose to cross at the same time and get the benefit of safety in numbers. Had it not been for ARC it is highly unlikely that this crew would have been plucked from the ocean so quickly.

By Teresa Bright, crew

Oregon