FREAK BOATING ACCIDENTS
January 31, 2007
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Round about Christmas time, a 300-pound-plus bottlenosed dolphin leapt out of the water off Slipper Island on New Zealand's Coromandel Coast, landing on the deck of a boat on top of a young woman, knocking a man into the water, and two others onto the deck. The young woman suffered extensive injuries, including bruising to the brain, fractured vertebrae, every rib broken, pelvis cracked in four places, both lungs collapsed, lacerated liver, facial injuries, not to mention two heart attacks on the helicopter that transported her to Auckland Hospital. She was still in critical condition nearly a week after the accident, according to an account in the New Year's Eve edition of Auckland's Herald on Sunday. Such accidents are unheard of hereabouts, where one of the delights of sailing is standing on the bow watching dolphins cavort about in front of the boat, and at night weaving chains of phosphorescence (particularly wonderful to watch). We always choose to stand on the bow, watching them frolic. Perhaps it might be wise to retreat to the cockpit if they are leaping out of the water. It seems that even dolphins can misjudge.

This got us talking of other freak accidents we have heard tell of over the years. Charter guests told us of having a locomotive fall on the bow of their sturdy converted navy wooden launch. It was in San Francisco Bay, in the San Joachin River, an area we were familiar with, having gone up a couple of times in autumn on Magic Dragon. They were just passing under a railway bridge, opened especially for them. It opened as a diesel engine was about to pass over it. Apparently the signals had got crossed, the engineers could not stop in time and they had leapt out. The boat's stern reared up when the side of the locomotive hit their bow, taking with it anchor and all, never retrieved though they paused to try to pull it up. They returned to their son's place where they had spent the day. Their explanation for the boat's damaged stem: "A train fell on us." Sure.

Then there was a wooden schooner, about 40 feet or so with a short baldheaded rig, heading up into the shelter of a lagoon for some boat work. Seems the chart had the height of the high tension wires marked wrongly, apparently showing sufficient clearance to pass beneath. The mast touched the wire, and all hell broke loose. Bungs over fastenings and caulking popped out of the deck. The heads'l on the forestay melted and solidified where hanks were attached. Electronics were fried. It was a major catastrophe. To exit the lagoon, they hung a dinghy full of water from the boom to careen the boat and towed the vessel out by outboard-powered craft. We do not agree on the place of this particular incident. One of us reckons Mexico. The other seems to remember it being somewhere in the Virgin Islands during our charter days. But we both remember the occasion vividly.

In the lesser Antilles, an old salt returning to St. Thomas from St. Croix on a windless day was under power and automatic pilot, getting back as fast as the boat would go, when he and his crew were awakened by an almighty thwack as they came to an abrupt stop. They found themselves sitting on a forward bulkhead, the one at the foot of the bunk on which they had been sleeping. The steel fifty-footer had hit a sheer chunk of shoreline rock at about eight knots, crumpling and stoving in the bow considerably for a distance of a couple of feet. (1/2 inch stem plate and 1/4 inch topside plating no less). Their wooden mast suffered inertia inflicted cracks between spreaders. They had been traveling a knot or two faster than estimated and reached land sooner than anticipated. Current assist perhaps? They backed off, damaged but unholed, and continued on their way.

Recently, a friend arrived in an anchorage after dark, dropped the anchor in his usual way, remaining in his wheel house until he reckoned sufficient chain had been released, then hit the sack. About three in the morning, the boat, a 50-plus footer, fell onto her beam ends. Apparently the anchor chain had piled up on deck rather than lowering the anchor into the water, and the boat had drifted gently toward shore - onto mud fortunately, but on a falling tide. Alerted by telephone, his son borrowed our dinghy to speed out at daybreak to lend a hand putting out anchors. Then, as the tide arose, we powered in as close as we could get. There we anchored. A long strong line (never before used) was brought over to our sheet winch. The strong young man winched the boat off as his dad pumped the boat down onto its side by means of an anchor to the masthead. The tide was not going to be as high for a long while. They'd have got off without us, I suspect, but it was an adventure and a lesson to us all.

Then there are tales we hear but cannot vouch for. Perhaps they enter the realm of Urban Myth. For instance there's the tale of a man who got his wife to pull him to the masthead on the bosun's chair not long after they left Australia, in order to retrieve a halyard or something unspecified. He lashed himself at the masthead and proceeded to get on with the job. There he suffered a heart attack. His wife, unable to do anything else, powered back to the coast where help was obtained, too late. We told friends this tall tale, and she was so appalled by the circumstances that she persuaded her husband, who was not in the best of health or the first flush of youth, to sell their boat. She told us this long afterwards. Needless to say we felt dreadful.

Also in the Urban Myth category is the story of a wet-suited body being found after the passage of an Australian bush fire of the sort they are suffering now. The story goes the diver had been scooped up by a fire-fighting helicopter's monsoon bucket and dropped onto the blaze to douse it. However, apparently a TV station tried to prove or disprove the possibility of such a thing happening, using a helicopter and a swimming pool, and first a dummy, then a volunteer. It cannot happen, they proved to their satisfaction.