By now I suspect most of you know that Gizmo sunk near the end of the Eagle Island Race. She sank remarkably fast. Staying with the boat may be good advice in general, but in this case it did not buy you much. By the time we could cross the bay, she was long gone.

It was a slow race out. But shortly after B Class rounded a Force 4 wind came in from the East. This made for a white sail reach all the way to Budd Inlet. When we entered Budd Inlet we were enjoying a Force 5 wind that had clocked to the south. Before we got half way to the Shoal it was blowing Force 7.

Gizmo had just a jib up when she was knocked over. The Harmony is a MORC design and so stability tested. I expected her to come right back up. Instead she continued the rest of the way over. I assume this was with the help of a wave.

The waves had the power. They were unusually steep as the wind was against the in coming current. The average waves were two feet, but there were many three to four feet. In the trough one could not see over them. They pushed Sugar Magnolia backwards if I missed a tack.

The first boat on the scene was Pegasus, a San Juan 24 out to watch the racers who had been caught out. He was single-handing and barely in control of the boat. Still Doug came to help. He got close enough to take Peter's hand, but the boat was then out of control. So he gave up, thinking he had been useless. But he was seen out of control by Flying Circus, who then came to help him.

We on Sugar Magnolia were next on the scene. We passed as close as we could to John and Peter who were together. John lunged for the boat and we pulled him in. We made another pass to see if we could get Peter. That did not work. I was getting prepared to float him a line when, much to our relief, we saw Flying Circus headed toward Peter.

As I said above, Flying Circus has seen Pegasus and so had come north rather than head home. They saw Jay, floating face down. As they could not do anything for him, they moved on to save Peter. Even with the LifeSling it was hard to recover him with the boat regularly bouncing up and down four feet. But they did. They only then discovered that he was not from Pegasus.

We left to weather, going near the spot we had last seen Jay, but saw nothing but water. We turned and ran to Boston Harbor, averaging 7-8 kt. under main alone. We hit speeds half again that high surfing. We watched the official search start.

There was a SSSS crowd on the dock. It seems many thought discretion is the better part of valor.

Steve Worcester, crew Sugar Magnolia

John’s story in NW Yachting on line