Original Article in
the Internet Archive
THE TALE OF TWO ADVENTURERS
Providing
communications to sailing cruisers has it's ups and downs
by Robert Reed
June 8, 2005
Susan Meckley is
a 72 year old solo sailor aboard a 32 foot sailboat that just finished
a three thousand mile passage from Puerto Villarta to Hilo, Hawaii on
Memorial Day, 2005. The voyage was her first open ocean
passage. Susan faced some adversities that were formidable for
any sailing crew member on any small sailing vessel. The fact
that she did it alone at her age put the accomplishments of the trip on
another level. She was awesome during the entire trip. How
do I know this? I am a member of a network of ham radio operators
who track sailing vessels world wide nightly, and Susan was on our
nightly check in roll call.
On this same
night that Susan had triumphed, another sailing vessel we have been
tracking wasn't so fortunate and their trip ended tonight also.
It is the story of the sailing vessel "Tsunami", a 47 foot long ocean
going catamaran skippered and owned by Tom Haus. Over the years
we have followed Tsunami's adventures throughout the Pacific, from
Mexico to Tahiti and beyond, then back to Hawaii.
On this trip
they left Honolulu bound for Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands and
reported their departure with our network on May 26th. They were
making about 160 miles per day when one of their two rudders left the
vessel, rendering steering difficult. It's a scary situation in
the middle of an ocean passage. Big sails on large sailboats are
a powerful force that need powerful rudders to control a boat's
direction, and on a big catamaran one rudder isn't enough to keep the
boat controlled unless she is going fast through the water.
Tsunami was five hundred miles south west of Honolulu when her port
rudder came off, and they had to divert to the north west up to
Johnston Atoll, 715 miles south west of Honolulu.
I took his
distress call last night at about nine o'clock. I promised Tom I
would stay awake as long as I could and monitor several different radio
frequencies so that if he needed assistance, I would hear him and
respond. By three in the morning I called it a night and went to
bed without hearing anything. This morning I called him on a
several radio channels with no response, so I did some computer work
and then went surfing at Camel Rock in Trinidad. While in the
water, I kept thinking about how stressed out Tom must have been this
morning. He sounded very stressed out the night before.
"What a drag", I kept thinking while I was waiting for waves in the
ocean. Abandoning a boat like that means he could lose it for
good. It took some of the enjoyment out of what I was doing.
Tonight as I
write this, they reported a safe arrival to us here on our radio
network but they will have to leave their boat there unattended on an
uninhabited atoll. Tom will have to find a way to get back to his
boat, repair the rudder and bring her home. We will know more after he
is taken back to Hawaii.
I started
thinking about Susan again. I'd known of her for the past two
years, tracking her passages in Mexico. She left Mexico for Hilo
on April 28, 2005 and we talked to her and tracked her nightly. On May
11th and 12th she got some stiff 30 knot winds and big swells that
freaked her out. She was 1200 miles from Puerto Villarta where she left
from, and 1610 miles from Hilo. We pep talked her toward the fact
that she was doing a superb job, and there was no doubt she was doing
just that. She didn't like being thrown around and she let us
know about it.
By the 13th of
May the seas and winds calmed down and so did Susan. The rest of
her trip went pretty uneventfully, but she learned a few things about
open ocean voyaging by sailboats. Radio talk show host Art Bell
interviewed her by ham radio en route, alerting the media to her
accomplishment.
What about the
rest of her voyaging? She has big plans to go on to the Marshall
Islands, Thailand and all the places in between.
Susan is a
dedicated radio operator and she is also retired military. She
represents the best in all of us. Way to go Susan, you're a
heroine of mine any day of the week.
(Robert Reed is a
columnist for The Eureka Reporter. Views and opinions expressed in this
column do not necessarily represent those of The Eureka Reporter, its
management or staff.)
