We left Catalina on the 8th of October at about 6:00 PM. We had a fair breeze and set all sails, but along about midnight, we found that it was necessary to put on the motor if we were to keep our steerage way. The night was beautifully clear, until about 4:00 o’clock in the morning, when we ran into a sudden and dense fog. We had passed the main steamer lanes, but there were a number of boats that were whistling in the fog so that we stopped the motor, took down the sails and waited for dawn to break.
We then started the motor and proceeded cautiously finally seeing Pt. Loma loom out of the fog at a distance of about 500 yards, just below the old Spanish Light House. There was no trouble then getting around the point and into the San Diego Yacht Club, where we were greeted with all sorts of friendliness during out 10 day stay at the Yacht Club. It is a most beautiful place to lay. The accommodation and berths are most comfortable and the generosity of the people is fabulous.
There is a collision of thoughts going on in my head. I'd driven from Santa Rosa back to Pleasanton around 4 am this morning and encountered fog. It was not so bad that I had to get off the road and wait, and the lights of the cars ahead and behind me, like whistling in the fog, allowed me to navigate at a safe speed.
Anne sent me a link about a collision - a post on the Sailing Anarchy site entitled:
Doom and Unmitigated Failure
Seems a Hunter 40 named ‘Stann By’ T-Boned the Maltese Falcon (MF).
*10/10 Update: According to Latitude 38,
http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2008-10-08&dayid=178
it was a Nordic 40 named Stand By - and there is now a great animated sequence on:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=107835
As the facts come out, I'll update this post.
What am I talking about? Go here to see the Sailing Anarchy page with the post on it, go here to see a sequence of photos.
If you dig deep enough, you’ll find comments and a link that get you both Tom Perkins perspective, and Peter Lyons perspective. It is a little tricky, but leave a comment on my blog - or email me at cptnjhn@gmail.com and I may restate both perspectives. It took me about an hour.
The upshot is this according to Perkins and Lyons:
Stand By and MF were sailing towards each other (that's the nautical definition of reciprocal course) with the wind from the west. Stand By on Starboard and MF on Port. MF turns up into the wind a little to place Stand By to leeward. Stand By turns up, looses control and T-bones MF.
Then I sit down to eat and read, and I come across this gem from ‘The Night of the Gun’ by David Carr:
“It was clearly beyond the power of any of us to do anything about it”
The emotions going through my head set me up for an epiphany. There are many times in our life where something bad happens, and the people on the scene just are not equipped to deal with it. It becomes very clear. It happens. It's not that someone couldn't deal with it, it is just that the people on the scene couldn't deal with it.
The situation with the MF and the Nordic 40 prompts a lot of armchair comments.
But later on in this blog, the log from the Landfall II’s trip around the world will feature sailing through a hurricane, and being pulled off a reef. I know this because I have heard the stories. I have not looked for the section of the log that deals with those events; I’m just going encounter it when I get there as my Grandfather did.
The helmsperson on the Nordic 40 encountered something he was not looking for, just something he ran into when it was beyond his power to do anything about it. Luckily no one got hurt.
Whoever was on the helm of the Nordic 40 will never do that again. It is now within his power to avoid colliding with a mega sailing yacht. His experience has prepared him to 'Stand Clear' in the future.
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