News Around the World
John Fisher 1970-2018. When it was confirmed that Scallywag was heading east again having abandoned the search for their missing crewman our office received notes and phone calls from sailors of all types about the loss of their good friend. Clearly ‘The Fish’ was one of those special people who usually only reveal themselves fully when there is either a major problem onboard a boat or simply a demoralised crew in need of cheering up. Getting to know such people properly is one of the greatest bonuses of offshore racing
Southern Ocean there is so much solid water coming over the deck there are times when you are floating as if you are body-surfing at the beach, tumbling and spinning with no idea where you will end up, until your safety harness tether pulls tight and dumps you on deck. Or not. The report from the team confirms that John had unclipped his
own harness and was moving forward in the cockpit to reclip then tidy up a sheet on the code zero. As he was moving forwards the boat surfed down a large wave and crash-gybed, the mainsheet system hitting John and knocking him off the boat – the crew also report they believe he was knocked unconscious in that impact. There would have been a moment of panic for those on deck,
suddenly realising he had gone over the side – and for John, had he been conscious, the realisation that he was alone in the Southern Ocean would have been of pure terror. The crew would have reacted quickly, throwing the bright orange jon and horseshoe buoys over the side and shouting to alert all down below, while banging the large red man-overboard button on the side of the steering pedestal to log their position. But a boat sailing at 20kt travels through the water at over 10m per second, and Scallywag was moving much faster than that, in the freezing 35kt, gusting 45kt westerly that was powering them to Cape Horn. And to make matters infinitely worse, as a crewmember on deck
you can’t see. I was onboard Scallywag for the Leg Zero stages of this race, and I quickly learned just how hard it is to focus on anything outside the boat for a sustained period. Racing around the Isle of Wight it was gusting to 30kt, meaning that any spray from the bow when you are running or reaching is roaring back to slam into the cockpit and massively restrict your field of vision, even looking aft. As the terrifying situation onboard was unfolding race HQ were
monitoring closely and confirmed the crew turned the boat around quickly and started a search pattern, but how many agonising min- utes does that take on a boat hurtling through the Southern Ocean; navigator Libby Greenhalgh confirms the boat was several miles downwind before Scallywag finally began pounding back upwind. And when you do turn the boat around and start to flog upwind
into 35kt+ of wind and 5m seas, desperate for a glimpse of your mate in the water – again, you can’t see. Without ski goggles you
24 SEAHORSE
cannot face into that wind and spray for long, and wearing goggles is like staring though heavy rain on a car windscreen. Some years ago I was the late replacement for a crew change
on the Cape Horn leg of the BT Challenge from Buenos Aires to Wellington, spending hours on the helm sailing against the prevailing winds and currents around Cape Horn, then on the brutal 5,000- mile slog upwind through the Southern Ocean to New Zealand. In those conditions the boat is slamming so violently, launching off the tops of waves then burying its bow up to the mast in the following trough it takes a massive effort just to stand up and hang on, and through all of this your field of vision is incredibly close. Even when Scallywag was at the top of a swell, where the wind
suddenly seems to rise and scream around you, the crew would have been desperately trying to focus and scan as much of the ocean as they could, with the wind, spray and freezing rain showers clawing their eyes as they searched for their mate; and through all this, just to communicate with each other, they would have had to shout at the top of their lungs as they searched. John was wearing a bright red ocean dry suit, but the warm,
neoprene balaclava he had on was black and, with his head just above the water, that would have been hard to see. This is not a criticism, just an observation. When the crew were looking for Alex Gough after he was flicked overboard on Leg 4 from Melbourne to Hong Kong, in tropical conditions with a slight swell, Alex was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and shorts, and the crew only saw him because he raised his arm – and anyone who has done a survival course in a swimming pool wearing foul-weather gear and an inflated lifejacket and sea boots knows that any such sustained movement is exhausting. And so had Scallywag’s John been conscious he would have
raised his arm and waved, praying to be seen, but it was not to be. David Witt and his crew would have been frantic – straining into the wind to see him, desperate to do one more circuit – one more lap, another pass, knowing that John could suddenly pop out of a swell and appear right next to the boat. But as time wore on and the light began to fade the appalling
thought began to enter their minds that they wouldn’t find him, and with a gale rapidly approaching they would have to abandon their
w
KONRAD FROST
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