By Douglas A. Campbell  - Senior Writer  - Soundings Publications
SoundingsOnline.com

The Coast Guard in North Carolina knew Sunday night, May 5, that a 37-foot sailboat nine miles off Oregon Inlet was having problems in a growing storm. They were maintaining hourly contact with the crew on board Seaker — a 70-year-old man and two women — when at 3 a.m. Monday an EPIRB signal came in. But this was from the sailboat Lou Pantai. A half-hour later a second EPIRB signaled, this one from the 54-foot sailboat Flying Colours, and by 6:15 yet another EPIRB, from the 67-foot sailboat Illusion, had been triggered,

Hell was breaking loose out on the Atlantic. Seas were piling up to 40 feet, and winds were topping 60 knots as the Coast Guard in Elizabeth City scrambled C-130 aircraft and HH-60 helicopters. Thirteen lives were in jeopardy on the four sailboats; Coast Guard rescuers were on the way.

The four yachts were scattered hundreds of miles apart. Seaker was in shoal water close to the coast. Lou Pantai was 225 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, apparently south of Flying Colours, which was 200 miles east of Cape Fear and 50 miles east of Illusion.

Lt. Cdr. Daniel Molthen was the pilot of the helicopter launched a little after 6:30 Monday morning to fly to the closest boat, Seaker, which was dragging its anchor.

“We finally found them, and they were pretty much … getting pummeled by these 30- to 40-foot waves,” Molthen says. The three sailors were inside the boat — a 70-year-old couple and their 45-year-old daughter, he says. “I got right on top of them, and finally the guy poked his head out, and we finally got radio contact with them again. We told them to wait for [the] swimmer to get near.”

The rescue swimmer was Michael Ackerman, who in February saved two sailors in 45-foot seas from a capsized catamaran east of Bermuda. “It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen,” says Molthen. “It’s pretty tough swimming out there in the Atlantic in those waves. It took him a couple of seconds to swim that 40 to 50 feet. He grabbed the back of the boat and just pulled himself up into it … almost like Spiderman.”

Hovering above Seaker, Molthen watched the scene unfold as Ackerman and the daughter jumped into the ocean to await the helicopter’s rescue basket. “They weren’t separating from the sailboat fast enough,” says Molthen. “The boat was pitching up and down so much, it might have come up and impaled us [with its mast].”

Seeing the mast thrust up toward the chopper’s belly, Molthen climbed quickly. But then the rescue unfolded seamlessly — by 8:30 a.m. Seaker’s crew was on dry land in Elizabeth City.

Meanwhile, another helicopter crew had flown nearly two hours over the Atlantic to a spot where a C-130, having spotted flares, had found Lou Pantai and its crew of three. Their boat had sunk and the C-130 had dropped a life raft. It was partially deflated when the chopper arrived. The sailors, all suffering from hypothermia, were hoisted into the chopper and flown to land.

Another C-130 had been launched from Elizabeth City to search for Flying Colours, and at 9:31 a.m. it arrived at the coordinates relayed by the EPIRB. There were 35-foot waves and 45-knot winds but no sign of the Little Harbor 54, which was heading to Annapolis, Md., from the Caribbean. The aircraft dropped marker buoys to begin charting the drift of the ocean so that a formal search could be mounted.

At 11:17 a.m. yet another C-130 was launched from Elizabeth City, and more than two hours later it began circling Illusion, the aluminum-hulled 67-footer. It was taking on water and had lost its steering. A helicopter had been diverted to Illusion’s location minutes earlier from Morehead City, N.C., and would arrive on the scene at 2:35 p.m. Lt. Scott Walden was flying that chopper.

Walden had begun flying at 8 o’clock Monday morning, following the C-130 that was sent out to find Flying Colours. “We ran into some weather, and we got the report that the C-130 did not find them,” he says. “We turned around and went to Beaufort, N.C., to get fuel.” Then they got the word to head to Illusion.

Traveling in and out of showers with a low ceiling, Walden’s crew found Illusion in 30- to 40-foot seas swept by 50-knot winds gusting to 60 knots. “They had a little bit of sail exposed,” the pilot says. “The sailboat was still moving west at 5 to 6 knots.”

The crew of Illusion — the captain a Scotsman, Walden says — had lost control of the boat when an anchor dislodged in the big seas. Hammering the hull below the waterline, it punched a hole in the aluminum, causing the boat to flood.

“They lost the engine and generators, and the … lines became entangled with each other,” Walden says. “They couldn’t get the mainsail up. They couldn’t get the sail they had up in. They were stuck in that configuration.”

It had taken Walden about an hour to reach Illusion. Bucking the wind, it took 90 minutes to get the two men and the woman back to Beaufort, where they were discharged unharmed, according to the Coast Guard.

By this time, a full-scale search by air and sea had begun for the four crew members aboard Flying Colours. The four Rhode Island residents were identified as Patrick Topping, 39; Jason Franks, 34; Rhiannon Borisoff, 22; and Christine Grinavic, 26. The search continued May 10. Flying Colours’ EPIRB stopped transmitting at 5:38 a.m. Monday, and there had been no communications from the sailboat since