RED SKY IN MOURNING

A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival At Sea by Tami Oldham Ashcraft with Susea McGearhart

On September 22, 1983, Tami Oldham, then only 23, and her fiancé Richard Sharp, 34, set sail on a 31-day crossing from Tahiti to San Diego, California, hired to deliver the 44-foot Trintella luxury yacht, Hazana, to its owners.

Despite their ages, Tami and Richard had collectively logged over 50,000 miles on the high seas. Richard, who had been born and raised in England, built 30- to 50-foot ferro-cement yachts before taking off on his own 36-foot sailboat, Mayaluga, several years before. Tami, a San Diego native, had already crewed her way from Mexico to French Polynesia and New Zealand, before joining up with Richard on an extended cruise to the South Pacific islands and New Zealand.

At first, Tami had not wanted to make the trip, preferring instead to continue on the course they had charted. But the offer was too good — a $10,000 delivery fee, plus round-trip airfare from San Diego to England and back to Tahiti — and they needed the money.

They carefully checked the weather forecasts, before setting sail at 1330 hours on a calm sea, making five knots. Not a single storm was expected, and it was past the middle of the hurricane season, plus the occurrence of storms at that time of year was statistically low.

On Day Three, a 35-knot squall hit. Forty-eight hours later, a deck fitting came loose and saltwater leaked onto the single-side band radio, shorting it out. And they’d lost sleep, due to the constant rolling from the northeast winds and rough ride.

But by Day Six, everything was tranquil again. The wind came around to their beam and pushed them easterly, exactly what they needed. Richard wrote "Bliss" in the logbook.

Then the Brooks & Gatehouse wind indicator gave out on Day Eight. "I hope no more of this bloody equipment breaks down," Richard told Tami, referring to the advanced on-board electronics. Even so, for the next three days, the Hazana flew, allowing them to relax, read and catch-up on their sleep.

On Day Eleven, they celebrated their crossing of the equator with a bottle of good wine while watching a pod of playful pilot whales. As the next six days ticked by, they continued to make good time, with the help of the southeast trades, accompanied by both whales and dolphins.

Then Day Seventeen broke gray, rainy and miserable. The winds were unpredictable, gusting from the southeast to southwest and back around from the north.

The next day, Tami and Richard learned from the weather channel that a storm — only a 100 miles to the west, off the coast of Central America — had been upgraded to Tropical Depression Sonia, plus another, dubbed Raymond, was brewing. But neither was overly concerned, as "storms come and go, I thought, often petering out," Tami writes in her book. Near midnight, however, they were hit with squalls and pelting rain.

When the wind veered to the north, Richard decided to take advantage of it, hoping to outrun Raymond. So they clipped on their safety harness tethers and pushed Hazana to her max, hoping to steer clear of the storm’s path. Though both had sailed in horrendous conditions before, this superceded anything either had ever experienced. To be safe, they cleared the decks of heavy objects, to prevent anything flying around.

Then came the radio report that Tropical Storm Raymond had been re-classified Hurricane Raymond with a minimum of 75 mile-per-hour winds. The next day, more bad news: the storm was now tacking to the north. So Richard and Tami flew every sail to its maximum capacity, desperate to out-run it.

Tami had never seen Richard so fearful and nervous. He decided to try another tactic, altering their course to the southwest. "If we couldn’t situate ourselves above Raymond, maybe within the next twenty-four hours, we could sneak to the south of the center and reach the navigable semicircle — the safer quadrant that would push us out of the spinning vortex instead of sucking us in," she recounts of his decision.

At 3 o’clock that afternoon, the updated weather report told them Raymond had altered direction and was now moving due west with gusts to 140 knots. It was only a matter of time before they collided with the storm. So they changed course again, this time heading northeast.

They’re biggest concern at that point was losing the rig, which would leave them disabled in the middle of nowhere without a radio. They didn’t fear for their lives, "as we knew Trintellas were built to withstand the strongest of sea conditions," Tami writes. However, there was the risk of getting seriously injured in the middle of nowhere. Richard wrote in the ship log book: "All we can do is pray."

The next morning, the seas arched into skyscrapers looming over the boat. The wind gauge read a steady sixty knots and they were forced to take down all the sails and maintain their position under bare poles with the motor running. By noon, the wind was a sustained one hundred knots. Richard made Tami put on the boat’s only emergency position-indicating radio device.

While Tami steered, Richard went below to try to pick up the latest radio report, but all he got was static. He gave up and came topside, fastened his safety harness and took the wheel. It took all of Tami’s strength to hold onto the cleat where her tether was fastened as the hull raised to dizzying heights and dove into chasms. The ascent of the boat over the monstrous waves sent the hull airborne into a free fall that smashed down with a shudder. Richard insisted she go below and keep her eye on the barometer. "Let me know the minute it starts rising," he said.

The wind — which was now up to 140 knots — sounded like jet engines being thrown in reverse. Suddenly, an avalanche of white water hit them, and the boat shuddered from bow to stern. Behind Richard, who was standing at the wheel, sheer cliffs of water rose, the tops blown into cyclones of spray by the ferocious wind. Tami remembers that Richard gave her one last wink as she slammed the hatch shut from below.

Below, Tami tethered her safety harness around the table post, looked up at the clock, which read 1300 hours, then at the barometer (now below the 28-inch mark). "No sooner had I closed my eyes when all motion stopped. Something very wrong, it became too quiet — this trough too deep. ‘OHMIGOD!’ I heard Richard scream. My eyes popped open. WHOMP! I covered my head as I sailed into oblivion."

*

When Tami regained consciousness, the sea was completely calm, with swells only a slow rolling six feet. She had to struggle to free herself from the dead weight pinning her down. "Cans of food, books, pillows, clothes, a door, and panels of the main salon’s overhead liner spilled off me as I struggled to sit up," she writes. She was also covered in blood, the result of a deep cuts to her left shin and forehead.

"Where was I? What had happened? I was confused. I couldn’t orient myself. The clock on the wall ticked a beat. 4 p.m.? That didn’t seem right…My tether, still clipped onto the table post, confined me. I was obviously on a boat — what boat?"

Her vision was blurry, the pain in her head excruciating. The water in the boat was two feet deep. "My God, what had happened?" she thought, trying to grasp the chaos of the situation. Books, charts, pillows, silverware, floorboards, cups, clothing, cans of food, spare parts, beans, flour, oatmeal — everything was either floating or stuck to the overhead, or to the bulkheads, or to the hull. The oven had been ripped from the starboard side of the boat and was wedged into the navigation station’s bookshelf on the port side.

While searching the boat for Richard, Tami happened to pass a mirror and screamed: she was covered in blood.

She struggled to the deck and found Richard’s safety line secured to the cleat on the cockpit coaming, but the tether hung over the side of the hull. The D-ring had parted.

"I desperately looked in every direction. Where was the howling wind? Where was the pelting rain? Where had it all gone? The ocean was a slow rolling six-feet, not monstrous like it had been…I became a lunatic. Forcing the seat lockers open, I threw cushions, anything that would float, overboard. He’s out there somewhere. Maybe he’s alive. Oh God, please…"

She scanned the ocean with her binoculars, then searched every inch of the boat for Richard, hoping he had found safety below. He hadn’t.

The Hazana was ravaged. The main mast was gone except for a four-foot piece still attached to the main boom. The missen mast was in the water, banging against the hull, held on by a shroud. Stainless steel rigging hung overboard. The lid to the in-deck propane locker was missing, and the propane tanks were gone. The engine wouldn’t even turn over, much less start.

"I knew we had capsized, but with this much damage and the way things were heaved about the cabin I knew we had to have pitchpoled too — flipped end over end, like a gymnast sprightly executing a handspring on a mat," she writes.

When Tami discovered how much water was actually in the interior of the boat, she panicked and thought it might be sinking. So she inflated a life raft, where she found fishing gear, hand flares, a miniature medical kit, a half dozen cans of water, and a sponge. She threw in canned goods, the portable world band radio receiver, and a can opener. As she was filling the raft on the deck, a swell hit the boat and everything in the raft tumbled overboard — including her only radio.

*

The ordeal had just begun. Though she didn’t know it then, Tami would spend the next 41 days inching her way over 1500 miles to Hawaii — without a mast, sails, or any kind of radio — while grieving for Richard and fighting severe depression and paralyzing fear. Her average speed: about two knots per hour.

Only her sailing experience, some shrewd decisions, and The Voice ultimately saved her life.

She immediately took the five Naugahyde-covered plywood sheets that had fallen down from the boat’s ceiling, and using a tube of lipstick, wrote: "Help — I am demasted at 15 degrees N LAT," before tossing them overboard into the water. Unfortunately, it would not make a difference.

Tami also made a nine-foot mast out of the spinnaker pole and attached the storm jib to it — giving her a tiny forty-five square feet of sail area, which was better than none.

And she dug out the sextant — a delicate instrument used by mariners throughout history to locate a position by using two objects to measure attitudes above sea level — which miraculously had not been destroyed. The only problem: the exact time is required to calculate a precise location, and Tami had lost her watch — requiring her to navigate solely by latitude. At noon each day, she would peer through the sextant’s sight tube on deck, carefully set fragile instrument down and lean over the broken boom blocking the companionway so she could see the bulkhead clock below.

Based on her calculations, Tami’s only chance of survival was to reach the northern nineteenth latitude, turn left and head towards Hawaii. When she took her first reading, she was amazed at how far north she was, since it was only the fifth day after the capsize. Indeed, throughout the trip, she based her calculations on being unconscious only a matter of hours — though it was actually 27 hours.

The danger: if she drifted too far south, Tami would miss all the Hawaiian islands and end up in China or some other Far Eastern port — putting her in jeopardy of starving or dying of thirst, a constant fear.

"Noon was the most exciting time of day, because I would take my sun sight and calculate how far I had traveled in the past twenty-four hours. It was always somewhere between twenty and sixty nautical miles. I just prayed I would hit one of the Hawaiian Islands and not sail past them. It didn’t have to be the big island of Hawaii I came to, even thought that would be the closest. Any island would do."

On Day Eleven since losing Richard, another storm came up. But, without a radio, Tami had no way of knowing how severe it would get. Fortunately, the squall dispersed as quickly as it hit.

On Day 12, she was overjoyed to discover she still had a quarter tank of water — which she writes was a "great turning point. I knew I would live, but more so, I felt as if I wanted to live. A tremendous weight had been lifted."

Deep into the journey, Tami saw a ship on the horizon, grabbed her flare gun and shot off three flares. The ship didn’t even alter course. Desperate, she grabbed a smoke bomb, lit it and accidentally dropped it in the cockpit — instinctively grabbing it to throw overboard, burning herself in the process.

At one point, she decided to remove the remains of the broken mast, since it inhibited her from getting to the bow easily. Tami spent hours trying to pull out the steel clevis pin. When it wouldn’t budge, she finally eased herself under the boom, then used her feet to lift the mast to relieve the pressure on the pin so she could remove it. Instead, it toppled from the boom, fell on top of her and trapped her.

"Flat on my back near the edge of the deck, I was terrified I’d fall overboard. As I tried to move, the jagged edges of the mainmast cut into my stomach. It weighed a ton. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stay there; I had to get free. I lay gasping, staring at the sky, mustering every ounce of strength I could find to shove the massive piece of aluminum off me. Arms pushed, feet shoved, stomach contracted, and every muscle in my body strained to break free. As the chunk of aluminum rolled off me, I caught myself along the toerail — the edge — just before the momentum could hurt me overboard. I lay back against the warm deck, panting. How much more could I take? I should have realized the mast’s foot would fall on me. What’s the matter with me? My sanity was treading water," she recounts in the book.

After the horror of nearly falling off the boat, Tami decided to trail a three-quarter-inch rope off the stern in case she ever fell in.

Tami continued to crawl to latitude 19" degrees north — and, hopefully, Hawaii. But she was getting apprehensive about the developing lack of wind. Ideally, she should have been in the lower 18— N latitude, where she could use the power of the north equatorial current to push her forward. But without her watch, she didn’t dare risk getting off course.

As if by fate, her first major turning point came the day she forced herself below to tackle the overwhelming mess created when the boat flipped and somersaulted during the hurricane. "I was becoming so depressed that I couldn’t stand to be around the mess another minute," she says now with a laugh. "A man probably wouldn’t even notice it!" It didn’t take ten minutes before she felt the watch, which had been laying on the floor just out of sight.

Tami was immediately able to move to the lower 18’ N latitude — where she could count on steady wind and a strong forward current. Her new game plan: stay in the lower portion of the latitude until she got closer to the longitude of Hawaii, then hang a right and head for the islands. "This would also keep me in the path of more shipping lanes, where I hoped my flares would be seen."

Within 590 miles of Hawaii, Tami started making good time: 60 miles one day, 50 the next, as the north equatorial current pushed her along.

The rudder became harder to steer, causing her to fear that it might become disabled — making it impossible to control the boat. The only solution: to dive under to investigate the cause.

It took days before she could work up the courage. When she finally did, standing on the side of the deck, "I asked God to protect me. Then I took a deep breath and jumped in feet first. The water felt chilly but surprisingly refreshing. The saltwater burned my cuts, my head especially, but I didn’t mind — it was healing….I treaded water, allowing myself to get acclimated, and then put my mask on. I took a deep breath and dove under the boat. Seven four- to five-foot mahi-mahis hovered against the hull. The bottom of the boat looked ominous with its large keel and small rudder. I surfaced for another breath as I tried to keep my anxiety and fear at bay.

"Diving deeper, I swam toward the propeller. I could see that one of the mizzen shrouds had wrapped itself around the propeller’s shaft…It would just have to trail along. I hated that it would cause drag through the water, impeding Hazana’s progress, but there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could hold my breath long enough to try to cut the shroud free, nor would I have the strength. Surfacing, I grabbed another mouthful of air and plunged down to survey the rudder. I turned it side to side and inspected it for any damage or obstructions. It seemed to be working fine….Oh, well, stiff steering is bettering than no steering. I was just thankful the rudder was in its place so I could steer at all."

On Day 26, with 480 miles to go, she began seeing birds — a hopeful sign that land was near.

On Day 34, with 240 miles to go, a ship appeared out of nowhere. She shot off much of her remaining supply of flares, and waved an oar with a red T-shirt attached — sure it would attract attention. It didn’t.

Day 35: an estimated 145 miles from Hawaii, she started seeing "floating objects — signs of humanity like plastic soda-pop bottles, a tattered tarp, flip-flops, and a Styrofoam float."

Day 38: Tami spotted land way off in the distance and celebrated with the last beer she had found onboard. Just as she was experiencing the relief of seeing the island, she saw a military plane overhead and rushed to shoot off more flares and raise her oar. "The plane never even dipped its wing." Then the island disappeared. Now as distraught as the day she discovered Richard missing, she ran below, grabbed the rifle from a locker, and crammed the barrel in her mouth. Fortunately, she didn’t have the nerve. And, as if fated, Tami returned topside and the island has reappeared.

Tami’s luck seemed to be running out as she veered off-course by 25 miles that night — the equivalent of 12 hours of sail time — due to heavy rain and building wind. Desperate, she made herself stay awake around the clock with a minimum of sleep in order to steer the boat constantly.

On her forty-first day alone at sea, Tami finally arrived within a few miles of the entrance to Hilo Harbor. "AT 0230 in the morning the lights in the bay beckoned me, but I dared not go closer because of the huge reef that stretched far off shore. With a glow stick I studied the illustrated chart of Hilo Harbor I had found in an old cruising guide. The words ‘Not for navigational purposes’ stood out…I had to keep reminding myself that I hadn’t gone through all this to end up on a reef now.

"So in the early morning I tacked back and forth just off the reef-strewn entrance. I was so near and yet still so agonizingly far away. Couldn’t I just be there? No, I couldn’t. I felt so confused. I knew I was a changed woman, never to be that innocent, carefree girl again," she writes.

The next morning, Tami prepared for the harbor entry by getting the anchor ready to drop overboard in case she drifted too close to the reef or shore. She also raised the American flag, and hoisted a yellow quarantine flag as required upon entering an international port. Just as she was about to move forward, a large ship headed out of the harbor entrance. Taking no chances, she grabbed the flare gun again and began shooting.

This time, it worked. The ship towed her in, and Tami’s extraordinary survival became a headline story relayed around the world.