23
AFR Midnight Rambler—A Commanding Position
At 8 p.m. on Sunday, the crew of AFR Midnight Rambler could actually talk to each other on deck without shouting. It was astonishing to go so quickly from the hell they had been trapped in to this moment of relative tranquility. One by one, the crew below climbed up on deck to see what had happened.
The Ramblers took in their surroundings and looked up into a clearing sky. It was surreal. They talked about stripping off their wet-weather gear, even joking about changing into shorts. Then it dawned on them. This was just the eye of the storm. As the rolling cloud formation from the other side of the storm closed in, they realized they had made it only halfway. They weren't going to be in the sanctuary for long.
Soon they were back in the fight, though this second round wasn't quite as punishing as the first. The wind had dropped to speeds of 45 knots, and the waves were now only as tall as five-story buildings. But the crew was still in survival mode.
Most of the Ramblers were still seasick and vomiting. Eating was out of the question. And because their eyes had been pounded by the saltwater spray and spew, their vision was blurry. In spite of it all, however, there was a sense of relief. With the drop in wind and the easing of the storm, these horrible conditions seemed almost normal.
At midnight, AFR Midnight Rambler was sailing in pitch-black darkness. Except for the compass located at the forward end of the cockpit, they had no navigational equipment. Mix and Chris took turns squinting at the tiny compass light and relaying the boat's course to Ed, who was back at the helm.
At 2 a.m. Monday, they still had no way of plotting their exact position. Fearful that the boat may have been blown too far east to have any chance of winning the race, Ed and Arthur took stock of their situation. As they talked in the darkness, a clear picture emerged. It finally began to sink in that they really were through the worst of it. And the boat was still in good shape. It was time to switch gears—to move from survival back to racing.
The transition back to racing was remarkably smooth. Gordo thought they were all so bloody relieved to be out of the storm that everyone needed to focus on something else, anything, to occupy their minds. And the faster they went, the faster they would get to Hobart. This time, getting to Hobart would mean more than having a “quiet little drink.” It would mean that they had made it through this ordeal together and beaten the storm.
The crew started racing again and taking more chances. They raised the mainsail part way, and the Rambler began to pick up speed. By 3 a.m., they were in the middle of the Bass Strait and sailing well. It was just starting to feel right, when they began to hear reports of what had happened to the rest of the fleet. The news was hard to comprehend: Boats dismasted, boats rolled, sailors overboard. The realization that people in front of them and behind them had died was overwhelming.
By first light they could see that the storm was truly abating. The sun came up with a spectacular display of spreading light, and, for Arthur, the bright sunshine was an undeniable sign. They had really survived the storm—they were going to live.
By noon, conditions had improved so much that they could fully raise the mainsail. They were racing flat-out, and, as a celebratory lunch, the crew feasted on Greek meatballs made by Ed and Arthur's mother, Margaret. It was the first time that anyone had eaten in at least thirty hours.
The meal, as delicious as it was, was followed by something even better. Bob had finally gotten the small handheld GPS working and determined their position. Remarkably, after sailing 200 miles, AFR Midnight Rambler was only a few miles from where Bob thought they would be. With his dead-reckoning skills and a compass, Bob's estimate was spot-on. Captain Cook could hardly have done better.
The Ramblers were elated. They were farther west than they thought they would be, almost on the rhumb line leading directly to Hobart. Depending on what had happened to the other boats, the Rambler could actually be in a position to win the race. Their plan may have worked.
Early on, Ed and Bob had decided to aim high into the wind rather than easing off toward New Zealand. Sailing west meant giving up the additional speed advantage of the East Australian Current, but it had two huge benefits.
First, based purely on the direction of the waves, it was the right choice. Steering away from the waves would have increased the risk of taking a hit beam-on and being rolled. So they tried to attack the waves as directly as they possibly could. It wasn't a racing decision, it was a survival decision. If their chances of surviving had been improved by another move—even turning north—they would have taken that option.
There was a second reason for their decision to aim high. Storms of this power have a predictable pattern. In the northern hemisphere, hurricanes rotate in a counterclockwise direction. In the southern hemisphere, the spiral is clockwise.
The highest wind velocities occur when the direction of the spiral is combined with the direction in which the storm is moving. In the southern hemisphere, this deadly combination occurs in the left-hand semicircle—the most dangerous part of the storm.
Bob knew what the Ramblers needed to do to get through the storm as quickly as possible. The storm was moving southeast, so they had to go as far west as they could, as fast as they could. The Midnight Rambler aimed high and pointed as directly into the wind as the boat could sail.
This was a decision made with survival in mind, but it kept them as close to the rhumb line as they could possibly be. The move also improved their chances of winning the race. But what had the other boats done?
By the 2 p.m. sked on Monday, the Rambler had made it to the northern coast of Tasmania. Bob got the position of every boat he could, racing or not. Plotting their coordinates, it was clear that the balance of the fleet had sailed east toward New Zealand, going with the gale. As a consequence, they were in the storm longer—some, for as long as thirty-six hours—and they had been blown away from the rhumb line.
What this meant, Bob realized, was that during the night the Ramblers had gained a huge amount of ground over their competitors. Not only had they beaten the storm, but the decision they made to minimize risk turned out to be the best racing strategy as well.
The boats that had gone east included a number of bigger and more favored yachts. Ragamuffin, Quest, and Ausmaid were world-class opponents. Ragamuffin was known and respected in ocean racing circles around the globe. They were superb boats, and the Rambler was beating them all.
Even though the bigger boats were farther south, they were also much farther out to sea. To get back to the Tasmanian coast they would have to tack, zigzagging into the wind. That would cost them huge amounts of time as they sailed the extra miles to Hobart.
It was exciting. After listening to the sked, Bob was sure that they had a real chance to win the race. And to cap it off, he realized that they were actually leading in the handicap standings—the ranking that would determine which boat got the Tattersall's Cup. AFR Midnight Rambler was, by a very large margin, winning the race. This was fantastic news.
Bob scrambled up onto the deck to share the news. He had one thing on his mind: We can't screw up now. Bob looked at the mainsail and thought, If we can just stay in one piece, we can win this race. Showing more emotion than he had in the worst of the storm, Ed heard Bob shouting, “We're winning! Just don't break the bloody boat! Reef the main!”
The news lifted everyone's spirits. It jolted them out of the shock of the last twenty hours. They were now in a commanding position. All their hard work could actually pay off. They had done better than the major boats that had survived the storm; they just had to hang in there. The adrenaline was pumping, and they were on their way to the finish line, only 160 miles away.
The journey down the Tasmanian coast was a blur. The Ramblers were exhausted from the storm, but completely absorbed with capitalizing on their position. With the wind from behind, they raised the spinnaker, something they had not done since the first day of the race. They sailed as hard as they dared, intent on not “breaking the boat.”
AFR Midnight Rambler was seventh in the race, with only Sayonara and five other large boats ahead of them. The small boats were far behind, and it wasn't until they got to Tasman Island on the evening of the 29th that they saw other competitors and helicopters. They were getting closer to civilization. Boats were coming in from all directions, but they were much bigger than the Rambler.
They made a hard right turn into Storm Bay, the same stretch of water where Nuzulu had persevered with a makeshift sail just four years before. Within striking distance of the finish line, and with the wind “on the nose,” they zigzagged 45 miles to the Derwent River. They could taste victory. All they had to do was sail the last stretch into Hobart.
The crew was at the edge, both mentally and physically. Everyone was exhausted, sleep deprived, cold, wet, and hungry. The wind began to get “fluky,” and they were facing a strong outgoing tide that was pushing them in the wrong direction.
The Ramblers were struggling to get up the river. They knew precisely how much time they had left to become the overall winners of the race. The clock was ticking.
To compound matters, they still had no navigational instruments other than the handheld GPS, everything below was drenched, and Bob had no nav table for his chart. He probably should have thrown it away, but he was so tired—and so fixated on the chart—that he spread it out on the wet cabin deck.
Bob was focused on trying to locate the Battery Point landmark in Hobart. This led to a fatigued conversation with Ed and “a bit of a stand-up.” Finally, they both admitted that it didn't really matter where Battery Point was. They knew where the finish line was, and that's all that mattered.
The wind was dying, and the pressure to win kept building. The breeze kept coming and going. It would be 20 knots, then nothing. Then 20 knots, then disappear.
The wind was intermittent, and it was shifting directions as well. Had their electronic instruments been intact, at least they would have some understanding of exactly what the wind was doing. Then Jonno suggested another jury-rigged innovation: They broke apart a music cassette and tied a piece of tape to the rigging. The telltale wasn't perfect, but they would have some way to gauge the wind's direction.
Ed was getting frantic. Each time the wind shifted, he would call for a sail change. They had to get the most out of each puff of air. It was maddening, Ed thought: After all we've done and all we've gone through, it's entirely possible that we could lose this race through lack of wind!
Ed was technically right about the sail changes. But practically, by the time the new sail was up, the breeze would be different. With the exhaustion of the crew, it simply wasn't worth the effort.
Up in the bow, Jonno had borne the brunt of the work to change the sails. He looked at Ed with a grimace and said, “Listen, mate. That's enough. If you want another sail change, you can bloody well do it yourself.” It was the sort of smart-aleck remark that they often made to each other, but this time Jonno was only half joking.
Ed didn't like being told he was wrong. But he also realized that he was so focused on winning the race that he had lost touch with reality. He was changing sails too much, and it wasn't working. The crew was spent.
Tension had reached a breaking point. Watching the exchange, Gordo picked up the last winch handle that they had on the boat. The winch handle is a critical piece of equipment, and without one it would be nearly impossible to adjust the sails. They had started the race with several handles, but all but one had been lost over the side. The second to last winch handle had been dropped by Mix, as his job as pitman relied heavily on cranking the winches.
Gordo moved across the cockpit and looked at Mix. He held out the last remaining winch handle. With a tone both serious and nonchalant, Gordo said, “Just chuck this one over the side, will you, Mix?”
Everyone burst into laughter. It was obviously the worst possible thing that Mix could have done. They would have been reduced to turning the winch with their fingers—clearly, a hopeless task. Gordo the comedian had broken the tension. They could almost see the finish line, and they would work together to get there.