Sittbrunnen.se writes about the drama in ARC

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New ARC drama:
Swedes rescue rudder failure victim

Late on Saturday, in heavy weather on the Atlantic Ocean, the Swedish-owned More 55 Lady Nor sent out a distress call saying that they had hit something, lost steering and thought the boat would sink. The Slovenian crew who had chartered the boat panicked and requested rescue from the nearest More boat, the Lia of Sweden.

The distress message from Lady Nor on Sunday night was relayed by other ARC boats, as the distance at the time was 60 - 70 miles out of VHF range. But despite the distance and despite the weather, the skipper of Lia, Fredrik Olsson, did not hesitate to turn back. After a hard crossing he arrived at the indicated position, but it was the middle of the night.

The sight that met us was unpleasant and dramatic, with sails flapping and the boat drifting uncontrollably with the wind. The crew was in a panic and the skipper requested that they abandon the boat immediately. "We then agreed to transfer people to our boat when it got lighter with the help of the dinghy and we succeeded," says Fredrik Olsson via satellite phone.

He describes how he made contact with the other More boats, that they came to the position and stayed on standby nearby. Some of the Slovenian crew were transferred to the More Grey as there would otherwise be 13 people on the Lia.

NO DANGER

Once the evacuation was complete, skipper Fredrik decided to remain on board Lady Nor to examine the damage and make a plan to restore steering capability.

I understood that they had damaged the rudder, but also that there was no danger of the boat sinking. There was no water in the keelson, no cracks in the hull and the rudder shaft was still in place. That told me that even if the rudder blade was gone, the collision bulkhead in the stern was holding tight.

But the weather was still harsh with winds of 30 - 40 knots in the area and the boats threatened to drift into even worse weather. "With the help of ropes, we finally succeeded and were able to start towing towards a calm area to the south," says Fredrik Olsson, who was still on board Lady Nor at the time. However, he got a couple of the Slovenians to relieve him again.

When they reached the area of calm after a day or so, the rudder could be inspected by Fredrik and his fellow skipper Staffan Andrén diving under the stern. They found that most of the rudder blade was gone and that the lower part of the shaft was bent.

THE CASE SOLUTION

Once on board again, we began to think about how we could best organize steering ability again and found that making an emergency rudder with the spinnaker boom and cables would not be good. Instead, we realized that the best solution would be to make a new rudder blade. So we sawed a couple of cords, which we sewed together into a case that we intended to put on the rudder shaft.

So we decided, but how to get the case on? At first, we thought of detaching the entire rudder from the boat and hauling it aboard. But because of the rough seas, Staffan and I thought that seemed risky and decided instead to thread it on in the water and screw the halves around the rudder stock.

COLLISION WITH WHALE

Fredrik believes that what happened was not that the rudder blade came off, but that Lady Nor may have collided with a whale in the darkness of the night. He thinks this conclusion is obvious because the lower part of the rudder shaft was bent, the crew heard a bang and the boat made an involuntary lurch, as if it had run into something. The speed at the time was about twelve knots.

- "We see a lot of whales and when Staffan and I were working on getting the case on, some came unexpectedly close," says Fredrik.

A man on Lady Nor realized that the gypsy was coming and pulled his friend away. Both fell handlessly into the cockpit, resulting in a broken nose and a dislocated jaw. Fortunately, one of the crew of the Lia is a doctor and has helped the Slovenes.

On this Tuesday afternoon, the four Mores boats, Lia, Lady Nor, Mrs. Robinson and More Grey have about 1,520 M to go to St. Lucia. However, they are taking it easy to save on the emergency solution and are staying together. In ten days, the crews hope to make landfall. And they have enough food, water and diesel and are in good spirits.

IN GOOD COMPANY

The Lady Nor incident demonstrates the point of sailing in company across the Atlantic. Without the other Mora boats, and without the courage of Fredrik Olsson and Staffan Andrén, the question is what would have happened? If the Slovenians Sandi Fon and Nenad Petrovic had not received their help, they would have abandoned Lady Nor, gone into the life raft and More Sailing would have had one less boat in its fleet.

As ocean racers, we are also reminded - are we ready in case of a rudder failure?

Meanwhile, More Fun with the Russian crew led by Alexey Murashkin sails on and leads the class for the eighth day in a row. Overall they are in 22nd place.

First to finish in this year's ARC was the American racer Rambler 88 with George Davis. The new record time is 8 days, 6 hours, 29 minutes and 15 seconds. The best Swedish boat is Talanta with Mikael Ryking - eight overall.