A death at sea, the long version(you did ask for it..)
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Mon 4 Jun 2007 17:36
|
Mid morning, mid Atlantic,
sunny with few clouds, wind less than 5knts and we were motoring north east
looking for long-promised westerlies north of the high pressure ridge we were
crossing.
"Sarah Grace, Sarah
Grace, what is your position?" calls an unfamiliar heavily accented foreign
voice over the VHF radio. This is an unusual way to start radio
contact. Usually the caller gives your vessel's name followed by theirs, you
reply, both change from the calling channel and a conversation commences.
Iain answered and duly gave our latitude and longitude and then the caller
announced "I am now coming to your position" and ended the
conversation.
Almost the
only time contact is made from a ship is if they are on a
potential collision course and that is a pretty rare occurrence in my
experience. Yacht to yacht conversations tend to be rather more chatty. VHF
contact equates to line of sight being established from one boat's aerial to the
other's. So our first response was to shoot in to the cockpit and see where this
mystery boat was. From one blue horizon to another, the ocean was as empty
as ever.
So who and
where was this unidentified caller and why had they called? Did they
really say they were heading for us? How did they know our name? All these
unanswered questions led to wide ranging speculation. If there aren't any boats
around perhaps it was a call from a spotter plane, or a submarine: how
do submarines communicate anyway,radio waves don't travel through water....and
how do they navigate because GPS won't work down there either? Was the call
directed to another boat out of sight that was on a collision course and it
was a case of mistaken identity? Perhaps we had just given out our position to
pirates....
About half an
hour later the voice again called with the same question, and this time,
suspicions aroused, I got to the bottom of it before giving our new
position. It was a large ship who had earlier issued a request into the radio
ether requesting medical help for a collapsed crew member. A yacht that we talk
to twice a day responded to the call and had told them Sarah
Grace had a doctor aboard. He also passed on the position we had
given at our morning radio net a few hours earlier. Thinking telephone
advice may be helpful before I could get to the patient, I asked for some
information. From the halting english, it emerged the man had been found
lying on the floor
at about 9am, motionless and with no respirations,pulse or pupil reactions.
"Do you think he is dead?" I asked. Long pause, "Please come and see, I don't
know".
About an hour later the superstructure of a large ship appeared over
the horizon, coming
directly for us and we were soon circling behind the stern of a stationary huge
bulk carrier. They initially requested we come along side so I could get on
to the boarding ladder. I was aware that yachts beside 50' walls of
black steel always come off worst with rig damage as the yacht rolls only part
of the potential down side. So they lowered one of their liferafts- a very solid
20' open boat manned by 4 crew in orange overalls,workman's helmets
and old bulky lifejackets. I hopped aboard as they came
alongside SG and then as the boat was lifted on a wave, I started up the
boarding ladder. Iain and Karen tended Sarah Grace and immediately set to
emptying our 5 jerry cans of diesel into the tank in anticipation of a
possible imminent refill. This is always a tricky messy job, made no
easier by the rolling induced by a lazy 3-4ft swell.
At the top of
the ladder I was met by the strained looking cigarette smoking Greek captain,
one of about 3 people wearing down at heel casual clothes among a
loose group of ethnically diverse overall clad crew. As we entered the
"hospital room" a straggling retinue of about a dozen crowded round the
open doors.
From first glance,
the man lying on his back in bed was clearly dead. Pulling back the sheet his
hands, which had been positioned across his chest as if in a coffin,
were clasping a crucifix. Examination did not reveal any external
injuries, a blow to the head etc and so it is likely he died from a heart
attack .
Up steep
stairs to the bridge and then I tried to ascertain if there was any particular
paperwork or procedure I had to go through. In the end I had a very brief
conversation with the shipping line's medical person in Greece outlining the
facts but obtained no instruction as to any thing in particular to do. So I made
a brief medical report,obtained a photocopy of it, and gave all my details
to one of the crew.
The captain was
understandably very upset because the dead man was his best
friend and, as chief mechanic, he was now without a key crew member. He was
also concerned he would now be associated with bad luck at sea and told me he
was considering his future as a captain. By way of thanks, he
produced from his drinks cupboard two bottles of whisky- I accepted one and
refused the second, his need for spirits was greater than mine. He also offered
victuals of all sorts and we were grateful to have our now empty jerry cans
refilled. There was however a long discussion with various members of the crew
as to the suitability of the dark looking ship diesel for Sarah
Grace's Volvo penta engine. The subject was not concluded before a visit to
the vast engine room- more than four stories high and lined with the
biggest bits of machinery I have ever seen. The central space could
comfortably accommodate the average detached house. There the rather harried
newly promoted 2nd mechanic ran some diesel over his hand to show me how good it
was.
The jerry cans
were lowered down to the lifeboat whose engine was by now producing an
unhealthily large amount of smoke. By the time it was my turn to descend the
boarding ladder the engine had stopped completely and could not be restarted-
further adding to the captain's stress. With the lifeboat immobilised, we
decided to bring Sarah Grace along side the lifeboat for a quick transfer
of myself and the jerry cans. The width of the lifeboat kept us out from
the ship but it was with a little difficulty that we clawed ourselves
away from there. Not discernable from the ship but apparent to Iain on Sarah
Grace, the ship was moving sideways at about half a knot even in
the minimal breeze.
I still wonder why
the captain felt it was necessary to summon a doctor under those circumstances.
He did very well to produce one, hundreds of miles out into the seemingly
empty Atlantic. There was lots to talk about on our radio net that evening
and a bottle of whisky to fuel our shore party when we all finally reach the
Azores. I'm still not sure about using the ship diesel- a non
functioning engine out here would be a big problem- so I will canvas further
expert opinion. An Azorean fisherman may yet be the beneficiary of the
ship captain's generosity.
|