This is Raven--a 36 foot Islander sailboat. She was around 25 years old in this picture, but she was a sturdy little boat. Her first owner sailed her to Hawaii and back.
Garry bought her in 1996, and she became his home. He did a lot of local sailing with her, a few weekend trips, a week or two in the San Juans. But he hadn't done any really long voyages until the summer of 2002, when he decided to take a solo trip: six weeks up the Inside Passage between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland.
The first few weeks went great. He was having a wonderful time, exploring the islands, anchoring out in remote little coves, buying dinner fresh-caught off the fishing boats. He called me every few days--when he had cell service--to tell me about his adventures. It was beautiful, it was peaceful, it was far away from civilization.
One morning he set out from Cortes Island, up in Desolation Sound. He'd been underway about half an hour. He was up in the cockpit, at the wheel, when he saw a puff of smoke come out the heater vent, from inside the cabin. He thought, that's odd, I thought I turned the heater off. So he opened the hatch, and the cabin was full of thick, black smoke.
The first thing Garry did was grab his handheld radio and call in a Mayday to the Coast Guard. They told him they were sending help, but their nearest boats were twenty minutes away. Then he went for a fire extinguisher and tried to put out the fire. It was clear pretty quickly that the fire was already beyond anything he could get under control. Garry saw that he was going to have to abandon ship.
He was towing a dinghy, so he pulled it alongside and tried to climb in it. But that dinghy was never stable, even on a good day. It flipped over and dumped him. So now, he was the water. It was 150 feet deep and about 53 degrees F.--cold enough for hypothermia to start setting in within a few minutes. There was a wind of about 20 knots and the waves were running two or three feet high. He was at least half a mile from shore. And, when he fell in, he lost his radio. There was nothing he could do but float there and watch Raven burn.
He spent about twenty minutes in the water before he was picked up by a some wonderful folks on the Grand Banks trawler Voyageur, who'd heard his Mayday (they also took the pictures above). They took him in to a Seattle Yacht Club outstation on Cortes Island. The local paramedics checked Garry out while the yacht club caretaker fed him hot tea and washed and dried his soggy clothes.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Point Race arrived and put out the flames on what was left of Raven. At that point they determined there was nothing left to salvage, so they just took these pictures and let her sink.
When his clothes were dry, and the paramedics were sure he was going to live, the Point Race took Garry back to Campbell River. On the way across, the crew loaned Garry their cell phone to call home. He left me a voicemail that began "Don't worry, I'm all right..." Beware messages that start out like that! I called him back a few minutes later and he told me what had happened. I got in the car and started out for Campbell River (300 road miles and a ferry ride from Seattle).
Meanwhile, Garry checked into a hotel in Campbell River. Just a little while later, a local member of the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary showed up with a pot of hot coffee, loaned him some money and took him out shopping for some clothes, and then took him back to his place for a home-cooked dinner. By the time I arrived about midnight, he'd been well taken care of by a whole bunch of kind people. The next day we headed back down the road to Seattle.
Garry lived to tell the tale. He got out with just what he was wearing--t-shirt, jacket, sweat pants, underwear, boots, rain slicker, life jacket, and Tilley hat (he also had his Auxiliary ID card and a $50 bill in a pocket inside the Tilley. I used to tease him about keeping money in his hat--what was he going to do, fall overboard and swim to shore and use it for bus fare? I don't laugh anymore). He'd lost just about everything else he owned--boat, clothes, files, housewares, computer, cameras, books, CDs, cell phone, Palm Pilot, wallet. But the main thing was, he was alive and well. What made the difference? What saved his life? Three things were crucial:
- He'd taken that boating safety course--in fact, he'd taught them through the Coast Guard Auxiliary. He knew how to make a Mayday call--what radio channel to use, what information the Coast Guard needed, and what to do once he was in the water to give him the best chance of surviving.
- He had a handheld radio. A lot of people have radios on their boat, but mostly they keep them down in the cabin. By the time Garry knew there was a problem, the cabin of his boat was inaccessible. But he had a second radio in his coat pocket, and that's what let him call for help when he needed it. He didn't panic when he went in the water, because he knew help was on the way.
- He was wearing a life jacket when the fire started. The Coast Guard requires that every boat have enough flotation devices for everyone on board, but they don't actually require you to wear them. A lot of people think it's enough to have them where they can grab them if they're needed. If Garry had left his life jacket down in the cabin, by the time went to get it, it would have been out of reach in the toxic smoke and flames. Chances are, he wouldn't have survived that twenty minutes in that cold, rough water without it.
Garry is back on the water. He bought another boat, Jovanna (a 45 foot Columbia Motorsailer), in the spring of 2003.
He's still teaching boating safety, and he's incorporated his story into his presentations. If losing Raven at least serves that purpose--and possibly saves someone else from a much worse outcome--then maybe it was all worthwhile!
R.I.P. Raven
1977 - 2002
50° 02.712" N, 124° 54.8" W
