Black Sunday

So there I was...sailing away from Newport, RI several years ago with Kim on Crosswinds, our 26' sailboat late one Sunday morning. The weather forecast was not favorable with 5' to 7' seas expected and 25 mph winds but we had to make it to our home port of Mystic, CT and our jobs the next morning.  We expected to get beat up a bit but we had no idea what was coming our way.  As we rounded Pt. Judith, RI, we evaluated the conditions as this was our last chance to ditch into the man-made harbor of refuge that was built for just these occasions but felt we could handle the present conditions.  Shortly after the point of no return the sky opened up dropping massive amounts of rain while the winds built to 42 mph and the seas, coming from behind us, grew to somewhere between 10 and 15 feet high.  We had an outboard motor on this boat which makes it impossible to drop sails and motor into the seas, and back to Pt. Judith,  because the hobby horsing of the boat pulls the propeller out of the water making it ineffectual at best and destroying the motor at worst.  So, we shortened our sails the best we could and ran for Mystic some 25 miles away with nowhere to hide from the storm.  As the seas grew, Crosswinds started to surf down the waves at speeds that were much too fast for this boat.  My fear was that she would dive her bow into the bottom of the wave prompting me to fight the helm over so we would ride the wave on an angle like a surfer would do.  The hard rains were coming sideways from behind us making it almost impossible to look back to time the oncoming waves and this scenario was going on and on with no signs of letting up.  We had a fore sail that was huge but only about half of it was out thanks to a device called a roller furler that rolls the sail around itself.  With the wind continuing to build I was loosing control of the boat and knew we had to roll that sail up some more.  I asked Kim to take the helm so I could pull the roller furler line, effectively shortening the sail, knowing it was going to be a real struggle with the wind pulling on it with such force.  She saw what I was going through at the helm and felt she couldn't handle it choosing to deal with the roller furler instead.  I warned her to not let go of that furler line once she committed but the force of it was overpowering and it was yanked from her grip.  The whole sail unfurled in a heartbeat and the wind spun the 7000 lb boat sideways and knocked it flat on it's side to where the top of the mast was now touching the water.  Kim and I scrambled to the high side of the cockpit and hung on as the next big wave was bearing down on us.  (To be continued...)