Staying Calm in a crisis.

We were four days out of St. Marteen on a 55' catamaran heading to the Azores, and then Portugal. Other than the owner, none of the 4 crew had been aboard before, and we had not sailed together before. It was nighttime, and we had the screacher up in about 18 knots of wind on the beam and making about 12-14 knots. The seas were a little choppy, but we were under control and moving well. At the end of my watch, I went below and hoped I would be able to get some sleep. As usual when I'm out on bluewater ocean, I brought my PFD and tether to bed with me. The standing orders on the boat were that all hands had to wear a PFD on deck at all times, and we had to be tethered to the jacklines anytime we left the cockpit.

At around 2am, I felt the boat lurch violently and heard a commotion on deck. I grabbed the PFD and ran aft and up into the cockpit. I could see that the screacher was in the water like a giant sea-anchor and under a tremendous strain as the huge mainsail was still trying to propel us forward. Later, we found that the halyard clutch had caused the halyard to fail, but we had bigger issues before we could spend time analyzing what had happened. When I went forward to the bow, however, i realized that we were in a potentially lethal situation.

When the screacher hit the water, the thousands of pounds of Atlantic in it broke off the spinnaker sprit - an eight foot long aluminum "log" - at the pole was swinging between the two hulls like a battering ram. So far, the tangle of lines around it had restrained it from causing any destruction, but with the current sea-state it was only a matter of time before it holed one or both of the bows. If that happened, there was a good chance the boat was going down. It was clear that the first priority was stabilizing the sprit and then getting it strapped down on deck.

I called aft to stop the boat as fast as possible and that the immediate issue was not the spinnaker in the water but the sprit swinging away like a shiny wrecking ball. My heart was racing, but I have learned that panic never helps solve the situation causing the panic. Adrenalin helps, sometimes a lot, but panic just makes things worse. One of the crew, Derya - a Turkish licensed mariner and highly experienced - came forward and we devised a way to get a line around the sprit and winch it aboard over the trampoline. With that accomplished, we could turn our collective attention to the submerged sail. It took all five of us over an hour to free the sail from under the boat (fortunately we were able to do this without going over the side.) Surprisingly, there was barely any damage to the sail. A feew days later after the sail was thoroughly dried, I was able to patch it with the sail repair materials I made sure were on board for the 4,000 mile passage.

After the crisis was over, and the adrenaline had worn off, I reflected on my own reactions and the reactions of the crew. Nobody lost their shit. We communicated well, coordinated well, formed a plan and executed it. Nothing was really damaged other than the sprit, nobody was hurt, and if anything, the crisis really forged us into a tight crew. We had more confidence because of the problem, not less.

Through the miracle of Starlink, I was able to research welders in Horta (our first destination in the Azores), send him pictures and measurements, and two days after we landed in Horta the sprit was back on and better than new. (We had him add some reinforcements.)

Thankfully, that was the worst moment of the entire trip, and it was probably one of the top 5 most scary moments of my sailing (strike that) ENTIRE life.