How five Canadian sailors survived their sailboat sinking on Lake Michigan

Globe and Mail

3 days ago

They bobbed on the surface of Lake Michigan in the pitch-black of night on July 16. Rain blown sideways stung their faces and 10-foot waves smashed into them. At the same time, their 55-foot ketch, Red Herring, was plummeting to the bottom of the Great Lake, 400 feet below.
The five crew members, all skilled and veteran sailors from Toronto, tried to keep as near to one another as possible for safety reasons.
Fifteen minutes earlier, the rudder had been torn out of the back of the sailboat as it was launched down a wave. At that point, there was no saving the Red Herring, a venerable 45-year-old craft fashioned out of cedar and owned by Fred Eaton, a member of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club and former Rolex Canadian Sailor of the Year.
Mr. Eaton is the son of the late Fredrik Stefan Eaton, the patriarch of the family's retail empire. He was aboard when the incident occurred, but was not available to speak about it.
Several days earlier, the yacht had finished second overall, ahead of 189 other competitors, in Michigan's 480-kilometre Bayview Mackinac Race. It completed the event in 35 hours, 42 minutes and 39 seconds, and at no point was there a hint of a mechanical or structural issue.
It sank as it was being delivered for the start of the July 18 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. The 536-kilometre regatta, established in 1898, is the oldest and longest freshwater race in the world. Several hundred boats and more than 3,000 sailors compete each year.
It is also quite dangerous.
Each of the five Great Lakes pose a threat to sailors. They are small compared with an ocean and relatively shallow, and become extremely rough in heavy weather. Among them, Lake Michigan is considered the worst.
In 1940, 32 out of 40 boats withdrew from the Bayview to Mackinac race because of weather conditions. In 1985, 96 out of 316 vessels in the Chicago to Mackinac race did the same. Deaths have occurred.
The Red Herring was about 24 kilometres off the shore of Kewaunee, Wis., when disaster struck.
'We were expecting challenging conditions but thought they would be manageable,' Magnus Clarke, a crew member, said Friday as he and his wife, Heather Kosa Clarke, drove to Toronto from Chicago.
Mr. Clarke has competed in 13 Chicago to Mackinac races, two Olympic campaigns and was a member of two America's Cup challengers.
As soon as the rudder was lost, all hell broke loose.
'We realized we were sinking badly,' Mr. Clarke said. 'We knew it was a catastrophic situation. After we lost the rudder, we were all overboard and in the water 15 minutes later.'
The crew barely had time to issue a mayday – an internationally recognized distress signal – and send a text to its onshore support team to explain the dire circumstances.
Mr. Clarke is 56 and has sailed for five decades. He has taken part in safety drills more times than he can remember. This was more terrifying than any training session.
'It was absolutely and categorically the most dangerous situation I have ever been in,' he said.
A Good Samaritan sailing near the Red Herring reported the capsizing to the United States Coast Guard, which also picked up the mayday at 9:31 p.m. It immediately dispatched a Jayhawk helicopter from a station at Traverse City, Mich., and a 45-foot rescue craft from Sturgeon Bay, Wis.
The Toronto-based yacht was equipped with an emergency positioning beacon, which broadcast its global co-ordinates before it went under. The five sailors also wore life vests that likewise transmitted their GPS co-ordinates.
The crew members were in the 19-degree water for more than an hour before they were located by the helicopter and then hauled aboard the rescue boat.
Until then, all they could do was wait and hope for a miraculous recovery.
Heather Kosa Clarke did not race in the Bayview to Mackinac competition but was also aboard the Red Herring to help deliver the yacht to Chicago. She sails, too, and has security and safety training, but did not complete the extensive at-sea course the others had taken. She has experienced having a man overboard on her own boat, however, and believes it helped her in the emergency.
'I did feel I used some of the skills I had learned,' she said. 'Mostly I was trying to stay calm and make sure not to make the situation worse.
'The idea is to overcome any negative feelings. We didn't want to swim too much and lose energy and we constantly kept checking with each other and talking to keep everyone's spirits up.
'We knew if we kept calm and didn't freak out, it was just a matter of time.'
She said the boat was sailing under full control until the incident occurred.
'It was a very frightening moment,' Ms. Kosa Clarke said. 'You know a major failure has happened. You are scrambling around. It's very scary.'
On the same day the Red Herring sank, a 70-footer named Trident was knocked onto its side by a wave and a crew member was washed overboard. He was rescued by a fellow competitor an hour later.
'The most important thing in the moment after the incident was for us to communicate with the Coast Guard and shore crew,' Mr. Clarke said.
The Coast Guard plucked the sailors – the Clarkes, Fred Eaton, his son William and Bob Batty – out of the water and brought them to the Kewaunee Municipal Marina. They were transferred from there to a medical facility to be treated for symptoms of hypothermia and seasickness. They are all fine now.
'There was a moment of euphoria when we first saw the helicopter,' Mr. Clarke said.
On Friday, he and his wife drove from Chicago back to Canada. They crossed the border at Sarnia, Ont., but first called ahead to let authorities know their documents were at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Mr. Eaton has a lot on his hands, including coping with the loss of the Red Herring. It can never be recovered from the depths of the lake.