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Couple Survived Hurricane
By CHARLOTTE ATKINS
Bill and Debra Thompson expected to enjoy a three-month
sail from the east coast of Florida to California with
friends.
But what they got was a firsthand taste of Hurricane
Floyd off the coast of the Grand Bahamas -- 42 sleepless
hours of fighting 30-foot seas culminating in a
helicopter rescue from the raging Atlantic.
The Thompsons have lived on 50-year-old Tahiti Ketch for
eight years, a couple of those in the Vero Beach
anchorage. Together they have 24 years sailing
experience.
In October, the couple got a call from friend Larry
Chamblee who planned to sail his 36-foot cutter- rigged
ketch from Annapolis, Md., to Los Angeles. He asked them
to join him and girlfriend Kimberly Winik.
Rendezvousing in, St. Augustine, they sailed to Fort
Lauderdale, encountering stormy weather, rough seas and a
close call with a buoy.
The weather was bad, but we’d all seen weather like that
before,” Thompson said. “We thought that was as bad as it
was going to get.”
In Fort Lauderdale, they outfitted the boat, named Layla
— a ferro cement and steel boat Chamblee built himself
over seven years. The crew took care of last- minute
details, checked the rigging, stocked the boat with six
carts of groceries and set sail for the Bahamas on
midnight Sunday, Oct. 11.
Their plan was to sail to the Bahamas, the Abacos and
Jamaica then head through the Panama Canal and on to
California.
Weather reports said winds were out of the south at 9
knots, but reported a depression south of Cuba. It was
headed north and expected to go up the Gulf along the
west coast of Florida.
The storm was Hurricane Floyd. “It was a little rough,
but we decided to go for it. We figured if it hit the
west coast we would get bad weather here and be delayed a
week,” Thompson said.
First stop, Freeport. Estimated time of arrival, dawn.
“But it kept getting rougher and rougher,” Mrs. Thompson
said.
They were approaching the Bahamas in 10-foot seas. But
with winds out of the northeast and the gulf stream
current going north, the Layla couldn’t make headway.
They were about 10 to 15 miles from West End on Grand
Bahamas Island when they heard that Hurricane Floyd was
in the Keys and headed toward them.
“By then we couldn’t head back,” Mrs. Thompson explained.
Squalls, brief sudden downpours of rain, came and went
all day.
“We’d tack out, then tack back and we’d end up in the
same place,” Thompson said. “We just couldn’t get south.”
The winds picked up to 50 mph and 30-foot seas became the
norm.
“Kimberly was sick and I was scared to death,” Mrs.
Thompson said. That was 3 p.m. Monday.
So they shortened the sails and decided to head north to
open water to ride out the storm.
Fighting the rolling boat to avoid broaching — when the
boat’s beam faces the waves and winds with a danger of
capsizing - the men tried to control the vessel as waves
pelted them in the face, stinging like BB shots.
Below in the cabin, the women secured all loose items,
preparing for the boat to flip over. No one had slept in
34 hours.
“We couldn’t control the boat, so we just tried to keep
her right side up,” said Thompson.
“The guys’ eyes looked like cherry tomatoes they were so
red from exhaustion,” Mrs. Thompson noted.
“We were all wearing safety harnesses,” said Thompson.
“But if someone went up to the bow on deck you couldn’t
see or hear them. You didn’t know if they’d gone
overboard or not.”
The boat had no companionway hatch cover as Chamblee was
in the process of making a new one. So Mrs. Thompson took
a piece of mahogany on board and with a handsaw made what
she called a “Mickey Mouse hatch” to try to close off the
cabin.
“We got pooped really good one time,” said Mrs. Thompson.
Pooped is sailor’s jargon for a wave breaking over the
stern of the boat.
“It’s a frightening feeling to look up and see a wave
coming down from way above you,” Thompson said. “you just
know the boat’s gonna roll.”
Thompson, from the water-filled cockpit, looked down into
the cabin and saw his wife standing in waist-deep water
with supplies floating past.
“That’s when I thought, this thing is going to go down.
We’re going to die,’ Mrs. Thompson said.
Fortunately, the cabin drained quickly into the bilge and
Thompson pumped out the cockpit.
“We got filled up a couple times in a row,” Thompson
said. With the batteries wet, all of the electronic
equipment went out.
Using the two-cylinder auxiliary engine for power, they
were able to regain use of the radio and made contact
with island authorities to let them know where they were.
“They told us Floyd was about two hours behind us meaning
90 mph winds were on their way,’ Thompson said. “We were
going to ride it out.”
The island officials contacted the U.S. Coast Guard,
which dispatched a helicopter.
In the meantime, all four of the sailors had crawled into
drenched bunks to try to nap since there was little they
could do except wait. They had no strength to keep
fighting the vessel.
A Coast Guard helicopter arrived about midnight. “I
looked up and there was Uncle Sam in the sky.” Mrs.
Thompson laughs.
One by one hey jumped into the water into a basket
dangling from the hovering aircraft. Mrs. Thompson put
her cat, Ballast, into a laundry bag along with their
valuables and passports and plunged into the sea with it.
While in the basket both she and kitty were dragged
through three waves submerged before being hoisted from
the water.
“That was the first cat they’ve ever rescued,” she said.
From the helicopter, the sailors peered down for a last
look at the vessel they were abandoning.
“That bright red hull, red and yellow deck sitting on the
wild, indigo blue water in the spotlight surrounded by
black. I don’t think I anyone of us will ever forget that
last image,” Mrs. Thompson said.
The crew was returned to West Palm Beach, dropped off on
a runway at the back of the airport at 2a.m.
“That part was anticlimactic. There was no one waiting
with hot coffee and blankets like in the movies,”
Thompson said.
Chamblee never expected to see his boat again. But a week
later, about to fly to California, he was notified that
his boat had run aground in Bimini.
The crew chartered a plane to the islands and found the
vessel intact, though she’d been stripped of everything —
food, electronics, the crew’s clothes, tools, even the
compass from the binnacle. Everything, that is, except
half a case of beer and a bottle of champagne.
After getting towed off the sandbar, they sailed back to
a dock, celebrating their survival and the boat’s with
the salvaged champagne.
The last the Thompson’s saw of the Layla was the bright
red and yellow ketch on truck bound for California.
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