Sunday, May 16, 1999
By Thatcher Drew
The Weather Was Very Bad Last Night
The fleet has been sucker punched by the weather for the past two days. Coming into Tybee Island, there were a whole series of rolling thunderstorms, first becalming the boats, then hitting them with 45 knot gusts. Team Michigan described the feeling of those calms: first the lightening of the breeze; then the growing unease; then dread; then a wall of wind.
Coming out of Tybee Island spinnakers were up and everyone expected a southerly at 18 knots. What they got was wind on the nose at 40. Taipan dropped out. The weather was overpowering. The light boat was airborne far too often. "Our problem was we couldn’t slow down," said skipper Peter Cogan.
When Outer Banks finally arrived at the Isle of Palms checkpoint in last place, after 19 hours of sailing, her crew could barely finish. They sailed to the wrong side of the flag and had to drag the boat around it. Robert (Peanut) Johnson, from Nags Head North Carolina, stumbled onto dry land with a glassy look and a sailor’s gait after a twenty-hour leg.
He got a welcoming kiss, a hand shake, a pat on back, a hug, another hug… walking through the crowd on the beach looking for someone he could tell it to. That person turned out to be Hans Meijer of Pomodoro, who had finished almost nine hours earlier. "Hans, wow… wow…" was all he could get out.
Hans translated. "Yea, that was hell out there, wasn’t it? Did you have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting last night? We had a meeting like that on our boat."
Peanut, with a grin, just says, "We went over so many times… so many times... Oh it’s good to see all of you all."
They had a "pretty heavy experience." They capsized, righted the boat, and it took off on its own. Peanut and John McLaughlin were still in the water, hanging onto the dolphin striker for dear life. McLaughlin: "We were this close to losing that boat, going through the water at ten knots, an easy ten knots… it was blowing 20… Just running like crazy."
McLaughlin, who is 51 years old, was dragging through the water so fast he did not have the strength to climb back on. If they let go, they would be left floating in the Atlantic Ocean while the boat sailed serenely on (they have personal EPIRPs). Peanut was right beside him. "All that water going down through your suit, you could barely hang on. John says ‘I got to let go.’ I say ‘no you’re not, I’m getting up on the damn boat now’. I don’t know where I got the strength."
Peanut Johnson and John McLaughlin make it to the start on Sunday Morning.
With an athletic heave, Peanut managed to get back on the trampoline and stop the boat so McLaughlin could scramble aboard. "It was a long night. It was heavy duty out there. I guess some of those blasts came up 40 - 45 miles per hour. The whole boat just lifted up. I guess we flipped five or six times. The last time we broke the rudder, We said ‘we’re going to the beach’… It was just getting light… Fixed the boat, had a piece of toast, and got back on. It was a good sail going up the coast. It was nice."
"We were spent last night. We had no strength after being dragged through the water like that…" There’s a long pause in the conversation. McLaughlin looks down, "Arggh, it was ugly."
Anyone who enters this race knows that these are the kind of things that happen. It’s a dangerous race. It’s also one for "sailor athletes" as Mike Worrell calls them. These are sailors who not only know the strategy, tactics, and go-fast tricks, they can also hang out on the wires all day dealing with six to twenty foot waves, multiple capsizes, violent pitchpoles, lacerated hands, and the constant wear and tear of minute adjustments to wind and weather.
One of the biggest dangers is a kind of numbing exhaustion that dulls the ability to react and make decisions. Every competitor can describe the effects: the missed landmarks, the wrong tacks, the stupid decisions that slow a boat down or put it in danger.
Right now Peanut and McLaughlin are asleep. Tomorrow morning they will drag on their drysuits again, climb aboard, and head north toward Hatteras (near Peanut's home), where conditions promise to be far rougher than they were at Isle of Palms last night.
