Transforming fear into respect

6º 43.021s 133º 20.401w

Sat May 04 2019

Isabel and I were chatting yesterday and I noted that had I not had the opportunity to sail with a professional crew on several Atlantic passages, I might not be happy right now. Matter of fact, I might be downright frightened. Perhaps an explanation is in order.

I’ve always been a risk taker. Began skydiving and SCUBA diving in college, flying sailplanes and airplanes in grad school, began skydiving hard, flying competitive aerobatics, flying skydivers, and racing 15 meter wingspan sailplanes after I had a decent paying job. Didn’t get married until I was 39; too many hobbies. Traded up when I met Isabel. She was an avid sailor, a member of the Royal Cruising Club in London, and had recently completed 2 seasons sailing on a Crealock 37 in the South Pacific. She has a lot of nasty weather sailing experience. She’s a lovely, sweet woman, but she’s also tough as old boots.

Isabel’s best friend from Uni was crewing professionally on various superyachts, and I got invited to crew a passage on a Swan 62 from Antigua to Newport, Rhode Island. Can’t believe Captain Ian Fagg was willing to let me come, but he wheels his around in a barrow. This was our chance to find out if blue water sailing would be something I was OK with.

There’s the being 1000 miles from land part. There’s the rough seas with pitching and rolling decks, trying to sleep when the entire boat is creaking and bashing, big waves breaking over the bow, nasty weather, zero visibility conditions in shipping lanes and while arriving in harbors, coming into St.George, Bermuda (now that’s a tiny pass) at 0200 in pitch black, blinding rain and big seas. You get the picture. It’s partly a head game, partly phisio, and not for everyone. There were only 4 of us so it was single person watches. No teddy bears. No one to commiserate with.

At the end of the first trip I asked Ian if he was able to sleep while I was on watch. Ian said he slept like a baby. I knew he had been happy with me when I was invited to crew the passage back South in the Fall of that year, then both Isabel and I crewed his next boat, a Swan 82 from Newport to Antigua, and in 2017 we crewed his next boat, a CNB 93 from Bermuda to Split, Croatia via Azores and Palma de Mallorca. Along the way it’s been an opportunity to get instruction and collect experience in the company of competent sailors, in anything from glassy flat conditions to “hang on to your ass” seas, windy and wet and cold and 1000+ miles from help.

In the flight test business we call this “envelope expansion”. We begin with the most benign flight conditions and very carefully and gingerly we fly a little faster, pull a little more G force, roll and pitch to more extreme attitudes, etc. The helicopter is instrumented so engineers can monitor structural loads and such, and the test pilot needs to have exceptional flying skills to get us the data we need to extrapolate to the next more “interesting” flight condition. My old pal and test pilot Bert Rhine was one of the best at this, and I’ve been in the flight monitoring room with him on the other end of the radio many times. Bert could pull G’s in 1/4 G increments, that’s how fine his ass was calibrated. Our jobs were to help Bert creep up to the edge of the cliff, but to make sure he didn’t fall over the edge. Besides, if we got him killed we wouldn’t have anyone to drink beer with later.

When we were done with a developmental flight test program, we knew just what the helicopter was capable of, and we could publish a Pilot Operating Handbook complete with performance and structural limitations.

We’ve been in some pretty sporty sailing conditions during this passage. From gusty squalls with driving ran, at night in the pitch black, of course, to 3 meter beam seas coming in big wave sets while the wind is blowing well over 20 knots and we’re blasting along at 9 knots (at night, of couse) we’ve all enjoyed some interesting watches. It’s amazing how much faster the boat seems to be going when it’s dark. The noises, the yawing and pitching and rolling, everything seems amplified. For the last couple of days it’s been pretty challenging just to more around the cabin and cockpit safely, seems like JollyDogs has decided she likes playing “bucking bronco”.

3000 miles is a long trip; we’ll end up doing it in around 21 days. Imagine having someone along that had never done this before, putting them 1000+ miles from land in dark and stormy conditions. Anxiety can turn into panic, seasickness, and plenty of drama that reduces the effectiveness of the crew. That creates more opportunity for dangerous things to happen.

Newbie sailors need envelope expansion just like prototpe helicopters. At first, skydiving scared the crap out of me, but I was determined to get past the fear. With the help of great instructors and jumpmasters I overcame the fear and learned to enjoy the sheer exhiliration of falling from the sky at up to 190 mph. It took time and accumulation of experience. Same with flying. The self rescue skills I learned as a SCUBA divermaster likely saved my own life after a glider crash in 1993.

Set reasonable goals for yourself and your crew. Find ways to get experience under adult supervision, especially in difficult sailing conditions. Don’t throw folks into the river and tell them to swim or drown.

Isabel knew several single hander men in New Zealand. They had launched from San Diego or wherever with their wives, then got pasted on the last leg into New Zealand. Scared their wives silly, who then left to see the grandkids and never came back.

With proper effort and motivation, most folks can turn fear of something like this into a strong skill set, while respecting and addressing the inherent risks. Then it becomes fun and exciting. Mostly.

As Clint Eastwood said in that Dirty Harry movie, “a man’s gotta know his limitations”.