Torn apart

The trip, however, is not going as planned. There was no wind for the first two days and the crew didn’t even get a sail up, while the second two days brought too much wind, making the ride uncomfortable. By Saturday night, May 7, 2005 -- the fifth day of the voyage -- the storm they have been trying to stay ahead of has caught up with them. The wind shrieks to 80 knots, the rain pours in torrents, and the seas, averaging 25 feet in height, have become so steep they cannot support themselves and break roughly on the Almeisan.

Ferrer is beginning to recover from his seasickness, and after he and Burd stand watch, they carefully make their way below deck to rest. Looking for a stable place, Ferrer lies down on a cushioned bench at the L-shaped table. But his head keeps banging against the port side, and since he’s lying below a large window, he feels like he’s stuck inside a carwash, and soon switches position so that his head is aft of the window. This move will save his life.

Ferrer has begun to doze when he is awakened by a tremendous bang and is knocked off the bench. He realizes he is underwater and that the boat is rolling, but when he opens his eyes, he is not sure which way is up. Thrashing his feet and arms to clear away the blanket still wrapped around his body, he feels a sense of rising panic, thinking he’ll never find his way out of the belly of the Almeisan. Then he remembers that as a child he was taught to blow bubbles to orient himself underwater. So he spits out some air and follows his bubbles. As his head clears the water, he feels the boat righting itself. The window above the bench has been blown to bits. Had he not moved, the shattered window and rush of water would have made a direct hit on his head.

He hears shouts from above and staggers to the companionway ladder and climbs into the cockpit. Waves are breaking all around, and foaming white water is being hurled through the air. In the dim glow from a mast light he sees Tighe, the captain, and first mate Reidy leaning over the side of the boat; he can also hear a voice shouting for help. Ferrer crawls over and sees fellow crew member Gilchrist in the water, tethered to the Almeisan by her safety harness. The two men on deck both have a hand on Gilchrist’s life jacket but are unable to pull her on board, so Ferrer adds his strength, and together the three make a mighty heave and drag Gilchrist up and into the cockpit. She slumps to the deck.

Burd has by this time also climbed up to the cockpit. When the boat rolled, he got a large bump on his forehead and a nasty gash on his ankle. For a moment, the five pause, stunned, and take in the situation. Not only did the boat capsize, but the monster wave also pivoted the vessel, bow to stern, and knocked out its engine.

The blare of the bilge alarm signaling rising water stirs Tighe into action. “We’ve got to get the engine started,” he shouts over the crashing waves and heads down the companionway, the rest of the crew following him.

Inside the cabin, debris is sloshing around in 2 feet of water. Each time a wave sweeps over the vessel, more water pours through the opening where the window once was. The feeling is claustrophobic, as if another big wave might roll the boat again, trapping them all inside for good.

Tighe gets the engine started, but the bilge pump keeps clogging and is next to useless at forcing water out of the boat. The captain grabs the cabin’s radio microphone: “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the sailing vessel Almeisan!” Then he activates the boat’s electronic emergency beacon, alerting the Coast Guard to their distress in case his mayday isn’t heard by any nearby ships. Help from the Coast Guard is hours away, since the Almeisan is more than 300 nautical miles out to sea, approximately halfway between the United States and Bermuda.

Having assessed the rising water below, Tighe motions for his first mate to follow him up into the cockpit. “Loch,” he shouts, “I think it’s time to prepare the life raft! Do you agree?” Reidy hollers back, “Yes, we’ve got to get off,” then staggers down the companionway stairs and shouts to the others: “We’ve got to go! We’re leaving the boat!”

The whole situation seems surreal to Ferrer, with everything happening so fast that there’s no time to think through decisions. He hears Burd shout to Reidy that they should stay with the boat while it’s still afloat. But Reidy wants to get to the raft. Ferrer isn’t sure what the right course of action is, but he trusts the captain’s experience, and he thinks to himself, I’m going wherever that beacon goes.

Tighe frees the life raft from its canister. As it self-inflates, he kicks it over the side of boat, having made sure the tether from the raft is fixed securely to the Almeisan. The wind hurls the raft away from the vessel, where it strains on the tether. Tighe has trouble pulling it back in -- the tether is narrow and cuts into his hand. Reidy and Burd lend their muscle to the job, but they can only get the raft to within 5 feet of the Almeisan.

While Tighe heads aft to see if the tether is fouled, Reidy acts. He detaches his safety harness from the boat and dives headfirst into the raft. He pivots around and shouts to Burd. “Throw me a heavier line!” Then disaster strikes.

An avalanching wave breaks on the port side of the vessel, sending the Almeisan careering down the face of the wave and into the life raft. Reidy is thrown into the sea. Tighe is hurled off the deck so violently that the railing where he secured the tether from his safety harness is ripped from the stanchion; he falls into the water far behind his boat. Burd, too, is swept overboard but somehow manages to keep an arm wrapped around a stanchion of the boat.

Ferrer and Gilchrist are still on board but are momentarily stunned by the blow. Ferrer gets to his feet first and briefly sees Tighe in the water behind the vessel, then hears shouting from the opposite direction. In the faint glow from a mast light he can see an arm extending from the ocean and wrapped around a stanchion; he moves toward it. Then he sees that it’s Burd, struggling to lift one of his legs over the gunwale. Ferrer grabs Burd by his safety harness and pulls him on board, where they both collapse on the deck and then crab-walk into the cockpit.

Burd looks around and shouts, “Where’s Loch and Tom?”

“They’re gone,” Ferrer yells out. “Both swept away!”

In the early morning hours, the three still on the boat do everything in their power to increase their odds of staying alive. They bail, they manage to get a small pump working, and they send out mayday after mayday. When dawn allows them enough light to get a good look at the waves, the crew members are awed by the sight of towering walls of gray-green water surrounding them.

Not long after, they hear a faint voice from the radio: “Sailing vessel Almeisan, this is the Coast Guard.” Euphoria suffuses the three sailors -- the Coast Guard has sent a plane. They will soon be rescued.

Joy and relief, however, soon turn to exasperation and concern. A Coast Guard C-130 rescue plane arrives, but anything it drops -- life rafts, a working pump -- is swept away in the hurricane-force winds. Later in the day, an oil tanker arrives and throws down a rope in hopes that the Almeisan crew can pull its vessel alongside the tanker and then be lifted out by basket. The effort ends in near disaster, with the massive hull of the tanker crashing into the sailboat, the impact further damaging the Almeisan. Still later that day, a US Navy transport ship tries a similar rescue, and this time the Almeisan is dragged under the fantail of the ship and nearly crushed.

Evening is approaching, and it’s clear that the next large wave will mean the end of the badly damaged sailboat. Ferrer and his two crew mates now have just one shot left: a Coast Guard helicopter that is on the way. The helicopter has limited fuel capacity, so it must engage in a complicated flight, landing on the deck of another Navy ship to refuel, then launching back into the storm, which has not abated.

When the helicopter reaches the Almeisan, a pilot radios. He says that they have only 20 minutes to help the three remaining crew members. It’s too dangerous to lower the rescue basket to the wildly swinging sailboat, he explains, so a rescue swimmer will be lowered and will drag each person away from the boat and into the waiting basket.

Rescue swimmer A.J. Thompson descends by cable into the crashing seas. He unclips and swims toward the Almeisan, but the vessel is drifting so fast he cannot reach it. Precious minutes go by. He is hoisted back up again and lowered just 5 feet from the stern of the sailboat.

Thompson shouts for one of the crew to jump off the boat, and Burd and Ferrer insist Gilchrist go first. She jumps into the boiling water, and Thompson has her in the basket in two minutes. He signals for the hoist operator to bring her up. Nothing happens. Waves sweep over the basket, burying both Gilchrist, who is inside, and Thompson, who is holding tight on the outside.

In the cabin of the helicopter, hoist operator James Geramita can’t believe his eyes. The wind has snagged the cable between the helicopter’s cabin door and an extra fuel tank. He’s leaning as far as he can out the open doorway and tugging on the cable, but it stays wedged.

The pilot can see that something is seriously wrong. If the basket cannot be retrieved by “bingo time” (when fuel limits simply won’t allow the rescue team to stay any longer), he may have to try and drag the basket toward the Almeisan and hope the rescue swimmer and Gilchrist can get back on board. He watches the wildly pitching sailboat and wonders how much longer it will stay afloat. But if the cable isn’t freed within the next five minutes, he will have no other option. If the helicopter doesn’t leave the scene at bingo time, it won’t make it back.

Geramita’s arms are aching, and he lets go of the cable and grabs the cabin door handle. With a mighty heave, he yanks on the door and the cable pops free. He quickly hoists Gilchrist safely on board and then retrieves rescue swimmer Thompson. The Almeisan has almost drifted out of view.

Thompson tells Geramita to forget the basket. “We don’t have time,” he shouts. “We have to do this by the sling,” a quicker but less secure way to rescue the men still on board. Geramita nods, and in a moment Thompson is lowered back down into the maelstrom. The two crew members still on the Almeisan are brought safely to the chopper.

The pilot immediately starts north to the nearest landmass, Nantucket. The fuel emergency light blinks for the last five minutes of the flight, but the helicopter makes it back there.

As the copter touches down, Ferrer feels both joy and sadness. He and two of his companions are alive, but he assumes the worst for the captain and first mate. He has no way of knowing that one of the two men is still alive down in the water, still hanging on to hope.

Michael J. Tougias is a writer in Franklin. This article is adapted from his newest book, Overboard! A True Blue-Water Odyssey of Disaster and Survival (Scribner), which comes out next month. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.