Yachting World
- Digital Edition
Fastnet Race 1979: Life and death decision – Matthew Sheahan’s story
- Matthew Sheahan
- July 12, 2019
In 1979 Matthew Sheahan, aged 17, was racing his father’s yacht Grimalkin in the Fastnet Race. After being rolled, pitchpoled, battered and half drowned, and believing the rest of the crew to be dead, he and two others had to make a crucial decision
The helicopter crew leave Grimalkin after cutting the mast and rigging free. Photo: A Besley / Royal Navy
During what turned out to be the wildest and most destructive night in yacht racing history, our six-man crew aboard Grimalkin , a 30ft Nicholson half tonner, saw conditions deteriorate rapidly as we headed out across the Celtic Sea on our way to the Fastnet Rock.
Aboard were my father, David Sheahan, Gerry Winks, Mike Doyle, Nick Ward, Dave Wheeler and myself. All had experience of offshore racing, all had raced together aboard Grimalkin for most of the season through a variety of what we thought were testing conditions, yet none of us had any idea how far we would be pressed during the next few hours.
My father and I on Grimalkin ‘s first offshore race to Cherbourg after taking delivery of her in the autumn of 1978. Photo: Matthew Sheahan
The first knockdown was a shock to the system, a one-off, an extreme incident that, like lightning striking twice, was impossible to imagine happening again. But when it did, time after time, it was clear that our focus had changed from racing to survival.
As we careered down the perilously steep face of a yet another mountainous wave it was clear this was going to be a big one – at best a terrifying white knuckle ride, at worst the end of our night. Within a few seconds our boat speed leapt from a lethargic amble in the trough of the wave to a thundering plane as the wave pitched us head first into the invisible trough 40-60ft below.
Running down what felt like a vertical wave under bare poles in the dark while trailing multiple warps, there was nothing we could do to slow down. As the log wound itself up like the rev counter on an engine that has just been floored, a pair of huge white bow waves arced out from each side, providing a V-shaped wall of water ahead.
The continual howl of the storm was deafening, but the rumble and hiss generated by this outrageous burst of speed rose above the background. A soul-chilling surge of fear swept through all of us as we heard the terrifying sound of a breaking wave 40ft above us.
Grimalkin was a Nicholson half tonner, designed by Ron Holland and built by Camper & Nicholsons. Photo: Beken of Cowes
In just a few seconds the 10ft high foaming crest was bearing down on us from behind like an avalanche. We dared not look back. There was no escape.
As time slowed down before the inevitable crash, the most terrifying aspect of our predicament was the realisation that we had no more options. There was simply nowhere to go.
Any attempt to steer along the face of the wave was futile and would have meant a knockdown and tonnes of foaming water cascading onto the boat.
Having been knocked down repeatedly and the crew thrown into the water, we’d already been there several times during the night.
We braced ourselves for the pooping of our lives, but a split second before the onslaught from astern, the bow disappeared as we nosedived into a wall of water in front. No one had seen that coming, not that it would have done any good if they had.
As the bow submarined into this secondary wave, Grimalkin’s stern rose until it arced over the bow and stood us on our nose. As we approached the vertical, crew were thrown against the back of the coachroof or out of the boat altogether. A split second later and we were hit from astern by the breaking wave and we pitchpoled.
Solid water and bubbles rushed past my face, my limbs streamed out as I was towed underwater like a mackerel spinner by my harness line. I had no idea which way was up, where the boat was, or what would happen next. Helpless, overpowered and overwhelmed, when your predicament gets to this stage your mind goes into an alien state where fear is replaced with resignation. But, as I was to discover three hours later, this clearly wasn’t my time yet.
How the Daily Star reported the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster
Seconds later I broke the surface, trailing alongside the boat, spluttering, thrashing around and desperate to get hold of anything connected to the boat. Although she had righted herself, Grimalkin was now starting to accelerate down the face of another wave.
I don’t really know what happened next other than somehow I managed to get back aboard. As I scrambled back on deck, I could hear shouting, but in the dark, the noise and the drama of the conditions it was impossible to work out who was saying what.
As I tried to make sense of the situation I looked aft to see a pair of hands clutching one of the vertical legs of the pushpit. It was Dave Wheeler hanging on, struggling to keep his head above the quarter wave. As the stern pitched and heaved, somehow we pulled him back aboard.
I sat there and looked at him and for a reason I still don’t understand, ran my hand down his harness line to find his carbine hook floating free, detached from the boat. Both of us went numb with shock.
The winchman from a Wessex V helicopter goes into the water to rescue a survivor from Camargue . Photo: Royal Navy
Until this moment, running with the seas had been slightly more comfortable, safer even, than trying to reach across them or lie ahull where we felt like a sitting duck waiting for yet another breaking crest to roll us on our side, sometimes through 360°.
Sailing downhill reduced the apparent windspeed, reduced heeling and provided a degree of manoeuvrability that allowed us to dodge the terrifying breaking crests. The trouble was that at speed and with waves coming from all directions – now the breeze had swung through 90° – the potential for a major pile up was greatly increased.
The reality was that until now we had simply been lucky, most of the breakers had rolled past us on either side – just. On this point of sail there was no skill in avoiding the waves, we were simply playing a game of Russian roulette. And when the bullet and the barrel lined up, the waves that struck us broadside had simply laid us flat or rolled us, ejecting the crew into the sea.
Running out of options
That was frightening and risky enough, but the pitchpole that we had just experienced was all the more distressing as it drove home the unpleasant truth that we were fast running out of options. What else could we try? How much more could we take? How much more could our boat withstand and how much more water below decks would it take to see her start to sink?
As we took knock after knock, thinking beyond the next 60 seconds seemed impossible. Tired, cold and hypothermic, just responding to our surroundings second by second was the best our six-man crew could achieve. Our ability to make rational decisions was being impaired rapidly.
Even the simplest things were becoming difficult. I remember that, despite recognising the various components of zip on my oilskin jacket, I just couldn’t work out how to do it up.
But, over the course of the next few hours, life was about to become far more taxing and present the most serious dilemma I have ever experienced.
- 1. Pitchpoled
- 2. The final blow
- 3. Drowning
- 4. The right response?
- 5. Dry land
Yachting Monthly
- Digital edition
1979 Fastnet Race: The race that changed everything
- Nic Compton
- May 18, 2022
Nic Compton investigates how the UK’s worst sailing disaster - the 1979 Fastnet Race - changed the way yachts are designed
The Royal Navy airlifted 74 survivors during three days of rescues. Credit: Getty
‘A soul-chilling surge of fear swept through all of us as we heard the terrifying sound of a breaking wave 40ft above us. In a few seconds the 10ft-high foaming crest was bearing down on us from behind like an avalanche. […] We braced ourselves for the pooping of our lives, but a split second before the onslaught from astern, the bow disappeared as we nosedived into a wall of water in front. […] As the bow submarined into this secondary wave, Grimalkin ’s stern rose until it arced over the bow and stood us on our nose. As we approached the vertical, crew were thrown against the back of the coachroof or out of the boat altogether. A split second later and we were hit from astern by the breaking wave and we pitchpoled.’
This is one of the defining moments of the 1979 Fastnet Race when, after having been knocked down multiple times and rolled through 360°, the 30ft Grimalkin was hit by a rogue wave and pitchpoled.
As she went through the roll, her rig collapsed and she remerged with a broken mast and the spars smashing against her topsides.
By then, the boat’s owner, David Sheahan, was dead, floating face down in the sea to windward, and two of the crew were slumped in the cockpit, also apparently dead.
Rescue helicopters went back in the days after the disaster to check every boat for survivors, including Grimalkin . Credit: Getty
Faced with this carnage, the remaining three crew – including the owner’s son, Matt Sheahan, then only 17, who wrote the passage above – decided to abandon ship and boarded the liferaft .
Only later did they discover that at least one of the crew left on board was still alive – Nick Ward, who went on to tell his tale in his book Left for Dead .
But of course Grimalkin wasn’t the only yacht to have succumbed to the Force 10 winds that ravaged the fleet that year.
By the end of the 1979 Fastnet race, 24 boats had been abandoned, five boats had sunk, 136 sailors had been rescued, and 15 sailors killed.
It was and still is the deadliest yacht race in history – well ahead of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race which left six people dead.
The rescue was described as the biggest peacetime life-saving operation in British history, and its impact has reverberated throughout the yachting world.
Stowage arrangements on yachts was one of the changes following the 1979 Fastnet Race, after many crews found it too dangerous to be below deck due to insecure equipment
It was a wake-up call for the emergency services and triggered a huge push for improved safety equipment.
But how much did it affect the course of boat design , and have the lessons of this deadliest of races really been learned, or is there a danger it could happen all over again?
When the 303 boats gathered for the Fastnet Race on 11 August 1979, racing was still governed by the International Offshore Rule (IOR), first introduced in 1969.
After 10 years of experimentation, designers had found ways of maximising the rule, not always with desirable results.
‘In 1979 all boat racing was done under IOR, but it was already in decline, mainly because designers had found their weaselly way into the rule,’ says the former Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) technical director Mike Urwin, ‘which meant that unless you had the latest and greatest you didn’t stand a chance. The IOR produced boats which wholly optimised the rule but which were opposed to the rules of nature, such as hydrodynamics.’
One of the main complaints about the IOR was that it produced boats which were ‘short on stability’, as Urwin puts it.
The 1979 Fastnet Race Inquiry looked at weather reporting, safety gear, crew experience and tactics, and search and rescue procedures.
The rule contained a Centre of Gravity Factor, which encouraged designers to aim for the minimum stability allowed, bringing ballast inside the boat and even fitting wooden shoes on the bottom of keels to reduce weight.
The result was lightweight boats with wide beams, pinched ends and high freeboards, which in extreme weather had a tendency to roll over and stay over.
Another major failing of the rule was that, as it wasn’t possible to physically weigh them yet, the boats were weighed theoretically by measuring their shape at a series of stations and calculating the overall shape accordingly.
This lead to designers adding all kinds of strange appendages between the stations to increase the waterline length, which in turn meant the hulls became distorted and difficult to steer.
It was an altogether bad state of affairs yet, speaking 40 years after the 1979 Fastnet Race, designer Ron Holland – responsible for dozens of IOR racers, including Grimalkin – defends his and his colleagues’ approach.
‘We were designing boats to the IOR rule, so it wasn’t just boat design, it was trick design. Without those restrictions we would have designed boats that were less distorted and faster, but they wouldn’t have won races under the IOR rules. The racing rule forced us to design narrow sterns, so the boats were tricky to sail downwind: you had to be skilled to stay on your feet – it was all part of the game. We just took the handicap system as it was and designed boats as fast as possible around that – still bearing in mind that if you don’t finish you can’t win and you need structural integrity to keep sailing.’
Lessons from the wreckage of the 1979 Fastnet Race
Holland experienced the storm first hand, first from the deck of Golden Apple of the Sun and then, when the boat’s rudder broke off the Isles of Scilly , from the inside of a rescue helicopter.
‘I personally felt bad afterwards, especially because of those people who died. We had never had that before. But the weather was so extreme; the waves were of a size, shape and frequency that I’ve never seen before. I’m convinced that even a Colin Archer would have rolled over in those conditions.’
As the crews licked their wounds and the families mourned their dead in the aftermath of the 1970 Fastnet race, the RYA and the RORC commissioned an inquiry to find out what had gone wrong.
Three questionnaires were sent to the skipper and crews of all 303 yachts, and 669 completed questionnaires were fed into a computer for analysis.
Yacht designer Ron Holland took part on the 1979 Fastnet. He said the waves were of a size and frequency he had never seen before. Credit: Getty
The result was a 74-page report, which looked at everything from weather reporting to marine safety gear , crew experience and tactics, and search and rescue procedures.
Yet, despite recognising that many people felt designers had ‘gone to extremes which surpass the bounds of common sense’ in their quest for speed, the section on boat design is relatively short: less than three pages out of a 74-page report.
Indeed, the authors seem to go along with the ‘consensus of opinion’ that it was ‘the severity of the conditions rather than any defect in the design of the boats’, which was the main cause of the problem – all the while noting that 48% of the fleet had been knocked to horizontal, 33% had gone beyond horizontal, and five boats had spent between 30 seconds and six minutes fully inverted.
The report didn’t bother investigating knockdowns to horizontal (so-called B1 knockdowns) because it considered that these ‘have always been a potential danger in cruising and offshore racing yachts in heavy seas’, so they regarded them as normal.
New measures
Buried in the appendices was a technical report comparing the stability of a Contessa 32 Assent – the only boat in the smallest class to complete the course – and a ‘1976 Half Tonner’ (generally assumed to be Grimalkin ).
The report showed the Contessa had a range of stability of 156° compared to just 117° for the Half Tonner, making the latter far more likely to stay inverted.
Despite these concerns, the report made few recommendations for changes in yacht design, apart from suggesting the RORC should consider changing its measurement rules and make it possible to exclude boats ‘whose design parameters may indicate a lack of stability’.
The overwhelming weight of the report, however, was about the weather, improving safety gear on boats and better procedures for search and rescue.
It concluded: ‘In the 1979 race the sea showed that it can be a deadly enemy and that those who go to sea for pleasure must do so in the full knowledge that they may encounter dangers of the highest order. However, provided that the lessons so harshly taught in this race are well learnt we feel that yachts should continue to race over the Fastnet course.’
Changes brought in after 1979 means boats have to meet the ISO 12217-2 stability standard in order to sail in the Fastnet Race. Credit: Carlo Borlenghi
Yet, despite this, racing rules did change.
From 1983, the Channel Handicap System (CHS) was introduced, initially alongside IOR and eventually, as the renamed International Rating Certificate (IRC), supplanting it.
The new rule encouraged a low centre of gravity by not penalising ballast in the keel.
Also, thanks to advances in technology, it was now possible to weigh boats which, according to Mike Urwin, ‘at a stroke’ stopped designers distorting the hull to get better rating – gone were the unseemly bumps and creases of IOR boats – and resulted in ‘more wholesome boats which were easier to handle’.
There were other changes.
From 1988, the CHS introduced a Safety & Stability Screening (SSS) system, which measured a boat’s stability and took into account factors such as rig, keel , and engine type.
Thus an inboard engine scored more highly than an outboard, and a sturdy, simple rig was favoured over the complex spiders webs of many IOR boats.
Features such as furling headsails, in-mast reefing and radar can have a big impact on a yacht’s stability. Credit: David Harding
Trisails and VHF radios became mandatory.
In due course, competitors were required to complete shorter, qualifying races before they were allowed to race in the Fastnet, and a certain percentage of the crew were expected to have a sea survival certificate.
And Urwin points to another way the 1979 Fastnet Race has improved boat safety.
When it came to devising an ISO standard for yacht construction in the UK in the 1990s, the starting point for stability was the SSS system produced by the RORC.
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The resulting ISO 12217-2 (which Urwin calls a ‘gold standard for stability’) is now not only used to qualify for RORC offshore races such as the Fastnet, but is used by most British designers to pass the EU’s Recreational Craft Directive rules.
Even more significantly, perhaps, the tragedy prompted a change of attitude, according to former ROCR race director Janet Grosvenor.
‘The 1979 Fastnet was the trigger that started a greater awareness of safety issues in sailing that exists today,’ she says.
‘You can see it in people’s ordinary lives and their perception of safety. Young people nowadays turn up with their own lifejacket , which they know fits them and is up to date, whereas before they used to all be provided by the boat. It’s a mindset. We are living in a more health and safety conscious world these days.’
The new approach came to the fore in 2007 when, for the first time in its 82-year history, the start of the race was delayed after the Met Office warned of extreme conditions in the Irish Sea, similar to 1979.
In her role as race director, Grosvenor delayed the start by 25 hours, ensuring the bulk of the fleet was still in the English Channel when the storm hit and could retire safely if necessary.
And retire they did, with 207 of the 271-strong fleet taking shelter in ports along the south coast.
For Grosvenor, the fact that no boats capsized and no lives were lost was a vindication of this new attitude.
Lasting legacy of the 1979 Fastnet Race
Matt Sheahan’s experiences during the 1979 Fastnet Race affected him for the rest of his life and sparked a personal crusade.
After studying Yacht Design at Southampton University, he worked at Proctor Masts before eventually joining Yachting World as racing editor.
In his guise as chief boat tester, he conducted a campaign to make yacht manufacturers more open about stability.
‘I was determined to include stability information with all our boat tests. I wasn’t trying to change the world or say there should be set limits, it was just about getting people to understand the issue and know what their boat is suitable for. When you sail an Ultra 30, with eight crew and minimal ballast, you know if you get it wrong you’ll be swimming and the boat will probably capsize. That’s ok, it’s a calculated risk taken by experienced sailors. What’s not acceptable is when you have a cruising family who don’t have much experience and just want a boat for weekend cruising, and you sell them a boat which is capable of capsizing if it heels beyond 100° or 105° – which is the case with many boats by the time you put all the extra bits of kit on the mast. But people aren’t aware.’
The Contessa 32, Assent , pictured taking part in Cowes Week, was the smallest boat to complete the 1979 Fastnet Race
As ever, suitability of a boat for a specific use is key.
It is important that buyers understand what a boat is suitable for and what it is not. So, are boats safer now than they were in 1979?
There’s little doubt that the advances in safety equipment, clothing and building materials have improved sailors’ chances of survival in extreme weather conditions.
And there are signs that designers are producing more seaworthy designs than before.
Conditions in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race were said to be at least as bad as in the 1979 Fastnet Race, yet only 18% of the 115 boats in the race had B1 knockdowns and only 3% had B2 knockdowns – compared to 48% and 33% in the Fastnet.
Heed the warnings
But Sheahan is cautious: ‘What worries me is that the lessons from the 1979 Fastnet get forgotten. Most yachts have better stability characteristics now, partly because of regulations but also because they are generally getting bigger, so they have more form stability anyway. But by the time you add in mast-furling , furling staysails, and all the other bits of kit on the mast, the centre of gravity starts to creep up and you have a problem again. There’s a trend to make cruising boats look like fancy hotel foyers down below, to make them more appealing to the family. But the minute the boat heels over, it’s a nightmare to get across. With nothing to hold onto, someone’s going to get hurt. There’s also a move towards fine bows and over-wide sterns, making boats harder to steer downwind. So stability might be better, but the handling is getting worse.’
Urwin also thinks we are far from immune from a repeat of 1979.
The subsequent inquiry into the 1979 Fastnet Race recommended that blocking arrangements on main companionways should be totally secure
‘With the best will in the world we can’t forecast exactly what weather is going to do. If it happens again, modern boats are less likely to get into trouble, and if they do get into trouble the safety equipment is much better. We have by various means, some directly related to the 1979 Fastnet, improved the design of boats so they are more seaworthy. But never say never. With climate change creating extreme weather, it could happen again.’
The truth is that boat design is always going to be a compromise between speed and safety and that no boat is guaranteed to survive all weather conditions.
And one thing that becomes clear from all the first-hand accounts of the 1979 Fastnet Race is that the conditions were beyond anything competitors had encountered before.
Today’s sailors would do well not to assume that modern boats could survive any better than those flawed boats of 40 years ago.
As Ron Holland puts it: ‘If a fleet of boats racing on the Solent was hit by that Fastnet storm, they would still find it difficult to steer and the result wouldn’t be that different. I’ve done a lot of miles at sea but I’ve never seen conditions like that.’
Sailors take heed.
Stability research after the 1979 Fastnet Race
The Contessa 32 was used in the research into the causes of knockdowns after the 1979 race Credit: Graham Snook/Yachting Monthly
The Fastnet disaster prompted the Wolfson Unit at Southampton University to undertake detailed research into the causes of B1 (90°) and B2 (full inversion) knockdowns.
Its conclusions were striking.
- yacht with a stability range of 150° or more, like a Contessa 32 (pictured), will not remain inverted after capsize, as the wave motion alone is enough to bring it back up.
- If the wave height is 60% or more than the length of the boat, then capsize is almost inevitable, therefore, smaller yachts are more liable to be capsized than bigger ones.
- The Wolfson Unit also found that a yacht which has a stability range of 127° when fitted with conventional sails drops to an alarming 96° when fitted with in-mast mainsail and roller-furling genoa.
Yacht construction
The 1979 Fastnet Inquiry also highlighted several ‘weaknesses’ in relation to yacht construction.
Steering gear
Many rudders failed during the race due to the weakness of the carbon fibre used in the construction.
The report authors highlighted that although emergency steering would only give ‘minimum directional control’ it was important it would work to get a yacht safely to harbour.
Watertight Integrity
The design and construction of main companionways was ‘the most serious defect’ affecting watertight integrity.
The inquiry recommended that blocking arrangements should be totally secure but openable from above and below decks.
Bilge pumps should also discharge overboard and not into the cockpit, unless the cockpit is open-ended.
Many of the crews found it too dangerous below decks as their yachts rolled due to insecure equipment, like batteries, becoming flying ‘missiles’.
The stowage arrangements in some boats were designed to be effective only up to 90° angle of heel.
Deck Arrangements
The inquiry found cockpit drainage arrangement in some of the boats was ‘inadequate’, and called for a requirement for cockpits to drain within a minimum time.
The report also highlighted the problems with yachts under tow, and recommended a requirement for a strong securing point on the foredeck and a bow fairlead for anchor cable and towing warp.
The report also called for adequate toe-rails to be fitted, especially forward of the mast.
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FLASHBACK: Recalling the 1979 Fastnet Race tragedy
August 8th, 2019 10:27 AM
By Southern Star Team
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Our special report, on the 40th anniversary, reflects on the terrifying ordeal of the Fastnet yacht race in 1979 that claimed the lives of 15 competitors.
By Robert Hume
AT 10am on Saturday August 11th 1979, a total of 303 yachts set sail from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, not realising what was ahead of them.
For skipper David Sheahan and his 17-year-old son, Matthew, on Grimalkin – one of the smallest boats (named after the witches’ cat in Macbeth ) – it was ‘the biggest challenge of their lives’.
Founded in 1925, the six-day Fastnet race follows a 608-mile course to the Fastnet Rock, the most southerly point of Ireland, and back to Plymouth, via the Scilly Isles. Until that year, there had been only one death.
The 6pm shipping forecast brought news of near-perfect conditions. One yachtswoman described it ‘like going on holiday’. But, unknown to competitors, a gale was brewing some 2,000 miles away in the Atlantic.
The yachts inched down the Solent strait in very gentle wind. On Monday they were becalmed in fog off Cornwall, but about midday the fog lifted and they rounded Lands’ End. The next 300 miles would be rough and unpredictable.
Crews got the first hint of the danger to come when BBC Weather forecast Force 8 winds.
On Grimalkin , David Sheahan reduced the sails and radioed Lands’ End: ‘Getting a little choppy out here,’ he said. Fellow crewman Nick Ward observed a strange ‘ochre sky’ before things started to turn nasty.
As night fell, and the wind whipped up, yachts lay scattered across the Western Approaches, with radio antenna broken, rudders lost and masts snapped.
There was now a Force 10 storm heading their way, said the forecast. ‘We were confident we could cope with it,’ said David’s son Matthew.
But it was no ordinary storm. A 40ft wave knocked Grimalkin on its side, catapulting Matthew overboard. As hypothermia set in, he said, ‘brains slowed down’ – he ‘forgot’ how to do his jacket zip up.
Yachtsmen were thrown out of their cockpits and left dangling in the sea by their safety harnesses. In the cabins, galley stoves and tins of food flew from side to side with every lurch.
Many yachts had no radios and instead launched distress flares. The crew of the Trophy clambered into their liferaft – a decision that would cost three of them their lives.
‘The most frightening aspect was that so many things happened at night,’ said Barry O’Donnell on Sundowner. ‘The noise of the waves was incredible … every oncoming wave blacked out everything else …’
Throughout Tuesday the storm ran unabated. Helicopters were scrambled from Kinloss and Culdrose but huge waves and Force 11 winds made rescue attempts impossible.
‘Nothing we can do for you at the moment … Good luck!’ came back the frightening reply to David Sheahan’s Mayday call.
Moments later, Grimalkin was rolled over by a giant breaker. Matthew thought he was going to die. It made him angry. A body floated by: he knew it was his father, drowned. Meanwhile, fellow crewmen, Nick Ward and Gerry Winks, were slumped lifeless in the cockpit.
As conditions eased on Wednesday, a Dutch frigate picked up the first two dead.
Helicopter crews began plucking survivors from the ocean. They brought up Nick Ward who had been alone for half a day, battered by the waves, while his friend, Gerry, lay dying in his arms.
Even the Irish Continental Line ferry, St Killian , carrying 600 passengers and 200 cars, assisted the rescuers.
Over the next two days, many yachts ended up in Irish ports – around 40 in Crosshaven. Grimalkin , half-swamped, was found by a freighter and towed into Waterford. Regardless , skippered by Midleton businessman Ken Rohan, was rescued after six attempts and brought into Baltimore harbour; another Irish yacht, Golden Apple of the Sun , owned by Hugh Coveney, (father of the current Tánaiste Simon) was towed, rudderless, into Cork. A huge crowd welcomed the Casse Tete as it was towed into Courtmacsherry.
Only 85 yachts reached Plymouth – among them Morning Cloud , former British Prime Minister Edward Heath’s vessel.
Fifteen sailors lost their lives. Two non-competitors, and four others shadowing the race, also died. Margaret Winks, Gerry’s widow, knew she would have to scatter his ashes at sea and dreaded it: ‘I feel the sea has taken too much of him.’
On August 15th, The Washington Post ’s Christian Williams, reported: ‘No matter who takes home the trophy, this year’s Fastnet Race will be remembered as the biggest disaster in ocean-racing history.
‘By late today, there were 17 confirmed deaths and 25 yachts sunk or abandoned in the sudden gale that hit the North Atlantic between Britain and Ireland, directly on the course of the race.’
Williams described the evening on board Tenacious , Ted Turner’s yacht, which was to eventually win the ill-fated race:
‘Isn’t anyone going to carve the roast?’ [chef] Jane Potts called out to Bobby Symonette, a veteran blue-water sailor who was hurrying by to his duty station.
‘My dear,’ replied Symonette, in his calm Bahamian accent, ‘There are not many who will eat tonight. And those that do will be sorry.’
‘The storm struck Tenacious a few moments later [see photograph of the Tenacious , above, courtesy of Afloat.ie, the eventually won the race].
As Turner and his crew would learn only later, it struck the entire fleet simultaneously, and it struck with the force of a B52 attack. More than 140 sailors would require rescue by Royal Navy helicopters and search vessels of every description before the night was over.
The Royal Ocean Racing Club, sponsor of the biennial race, said 13 of the dead were British, one was Dutch and one, Frank H Ferris, was an American.’
Later, in the article, Williams recalls arriving back in the UK: ‘When Turner’s yacht docked … they knew they had been through more than just another gruelling Fastnet Race. Immediately as the boat touched shore here, one crewman leaped off and ran to the race office for news of the competition. When he returned, smiles on board faded.
‘My God,’ he reported, stunned. ‘There’s a crowd of people up there and they’re all crying and they ask you if you have heard anything about their husbands, or their boyfriends. It’s like a tragedy here, not like a race.’
One competitor told The Southern Star that deaths could have been avoided ‘if competitive zeal had taken second place to common sense’.
Crews had been warned three days earlier of Force 8 gales, claimed another, but heavy sponsorship meant they could not pull out.
THE 15 COMPETITORS WHO DIED (yachts in brackets):
Paul Baldwin, (Gunslinger); Robin Bowyer, (Trophy); Sub-Lt Russell Brown, (Flashlight); David Crisp, (Ariadne); Peter Dorey, (Cavale); Peter Everson, (Trophy); Frank Ferris, (Ariadne); William Le Fevre, (Ariadne); John Puxley, (Trophy); Robert Robie, (Ariadne); David Sheahan, (Grimalkin); Sub-Lt Charles Steavenson, (Flashlight); Roger Watts, (Festina Tertia); Gerrit-Jan Willahey, (Veronier II); Gerald Winks, (Grimalkin).
Rescue as vivid today as it was 40 years ago
By Jackie Keogh
THE Robert – a 48ft Watson lifeboat – was back in Baltimore on Friday, August 2nd, [see below, photo by Anne Minihane], and with it came a raft of memories for the crew who were called out on Monday, August 13th 1979, the night of the Fastnet Race Disaster.
‘It was great to see the old lifeboat back in her colours with Baltimore Lifeboat on her stern,’ said Kieran Cotter, coxswain of Baltimore RNLI.
It was in Baltimore for the 40th anniversary of the Fastnet Race Disaster and The Robert may stay for the 100th RNLI anniversary, which will take place on September 8th.
The vessel represents many years of life-saving service, according to Kieran, who admitted: ‘I rarely look back on things but this is one night that is still vivid in my memory.’
The Fastnet Race started, as it always does, in Cowes in the Isle of Wight on Saturday, August 11th, but it was a severe summer storm that resulted in lives being lost in the treacherous seas.
Meanwhile, off the Fastnet Rock – which is the picturesque but frequently treacherous turning point in the race –the crew of Baltimore RNLI worked from 10pm to 8am to bring a yacht and its crew to safety.
Kieran [pictured, below] set the scene by pointing out that 40 years ago things were vastly different to how they are today. Of course, the route remains unchanged, but today the boats are bigger, much better equipped, and the crew can no longer be leisure-time enthusiasts. They must have a proven track record that includes training and serious competitive race experience.
Reading from the yellowing pages of the 40-year-old record book, Kieran confirmed that the crew received the call at 10.05pm and they were mobilised by 10.15pm.
Richard Bushe, the acting hon secretary, set out the timeline: he recorded how the keeper at the Fastnet Lighthouse – in the days when it was manned – notified them that there was a vessel in difficulty.
The boat they initially went in search of had, like 20 other boats, made it safely to Schull, but on their way back to Baltimore the crew received another message to go to the assistance of a yacht, The Regardless , after it lost its rudder.
Reading from the record book, Kieran said: ‘The wind was Force 9, South West. The seas were very high and the visibility was poor.’ When asked if that translates as ‘frightening,’ Kieran said: ‘No, but the conditions were difficult.’
In the next breath, Kieran admitted that the crew – which included Christy Collins, coxswain; Mick O’Connell, mechanic; Paul O’Regan, Peter O’Regan, Kieran Cotter, Noel Cottrell, Pat Harrington and Con Cahalane – all of whom are now deceased except for Kieran and Peter O’Regan – had to reconnect the tow-line five times.
Richard Bushe’s note that states: ‘This must have been the worst weather The Robert was called out on when on service.’
Kieran said the crew were used to going out in bad weather. Most of them had been fishermen, or involved in boating, and all were trained as lifeboat crew.
Equally, out of the nine-man crew on The Regardless , Kieran said a few of them were professional sailors and they were able to cope with the situation as she drifted.
They arrived back in Baltimore at 8am and they assisted in mooring The Regardless and ensuring that the crew were given the same warm welcome that this community offers every stranded sailor.
The RNLI crew barely had time to put shoe leather on soil when they got another call to go back out to the aid of The Marionette , a British yacht that was also rudderless and adrift. The vessel was 25 miles south of the Galley and 50 miles from the Baltimore station, and it was in Force 6 winds that the yacht – which had 12 people on board – was towed back to Baltimore.
The Robert could only do nine miles in the hour so it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that they found The Marionette and it wasn’t until 10.30pm that The Robert was housed, making it a marathon 24-hour service for the crew, which, on this occasion, included John O’Regan.
About 100 miles away, off the Scilly Isles, conditions were worsening as the weather front moved in and that year the Fastnet Race claimed the lives of 15 competitors and four more on an American support boat.
The majority of them had been on the smaller boats – the larger ones having made it in faster time to the Fastnet. And it was not until the Wednesday and Thursday that the full extent of the loss of life at sea was confirmed.
Kieran said: ‘You have to remember that communication was nothing like it is today. There were no mobile phones and not every boat had a VHF radio. And if they did have a radio, they were not able to transmit very far.’
Kieran also recalled the rescue of The Rambler during the 2011 Fastnet Race. He said The Rambler was one of the foremost racing boats in the world, but after rounding the Fastnet its rudder cracked, fell off, and she capsized. There were 21 crew on board and 16 were taken off the upturned hull by Baltimore RNLI, while five more – including the owner, George David – were rescued from the sea.
The Fastnet Race continues to be a hugely prestigious race with over 300 boats taking part as they start at Cowes, round the Fastnet, and finish in Plymouth.
Baltimore RNLI’s coxswain is 64, making him just 24 when the Fastnet Race Disaster happened. He said: ‘It was a massive tragedy, but, over the last 45 years that I have worked on the lifeboat, there have been more than 50 casualties in our area, plus the Betelgeuse, which claimed another 50.’
He named the five people who died on the Tit Bonhomme , the four who died on the St Gervais ; the three who died after being swept off the rocks in Baltimore; the two who died in Audley Cove; and all those tragic deaths that happened one at a time.
‘The sea,’ said Kieran, ‘is a dangerous place.’
'The sea was mountainous' recalls Fastnet keeper
By Paddy Mulchrone
A LIGHTHOUSE keeper on Fastnet Rock during the world’s worst yacht race disaster is to lead a remembrance service for the 15 sailors who perished in the treacherous storm 40 years ago this month.
The annual graveyard mass on Cape Clear will honour the dead of the 1979 Fastnet tragedy and pay tribute to the many hundreds who risked their lives to save many more.
One of the readings will be by Gerald Butler, 69, [pictured, below, at Galley Head], of Clonakilty, who was one of three keepers on duty that fateful night.
The mass takes place at 3pm on Sunday August 18th and all local mariners and seafarers – and anyone wishing to participate – will be welcome. Organiser Séamus Ó Drisceoil said: ‘We hope to finish off the Service with a rendering of the lifeboat song, Home from the Sea and would welcome in particular local singers who might join us for the occasion.’
Following the service, at 4.30pm at Cape Clear Heritage Centre, there will be an unveiling of a painting of Gerald Butler by Welsh artist, Dan Llywelyn Hall. Finger food and will be provided and all are welcome.
As one of the three lighthouse keepers working at the Fastnet lighthouse, Gerald saw first-hand the deadly swells and mountainous waves that led to the deaths of 15 people.
‘It was such a horrific event. The storm just popped up out of the blue,’ said Castletownbere-born Gerald. ‘It blew with such a rage and strength that the sea was mountainous. During the course of the entire night, it was yacht after yacht after yacht getting into trouble and calling for help.’
The Heritage Centre features an audio visual presentation on the Fastnet Rock, which includes coverage of the 1979 race which changed the face of ocean racing forever, heralding the introduction of compulsory safety measures.
The RNLI says a combination of factors – a freak storm, inadequate communications and a lack of safety measures that are standard in yacht racing today – was to prove fatal in 1979, as many crews were unprepared for the turmoil about to hit them and were too far out to sea to turn back.
Data from the storm revealed that as a front of low pressure passed over the Western Approaches, a column of cold airt crashed down from the stratosphere, splitting it into many smaller systems and “turbocharging” the wind.
There was no Global Satellite Positioning (GPS), no terrestrial navigation and many had no radio communications.
Survivor Phil Crbbin, crew on the yacht Eclipse , said later: ‘Even in heavy conditions at night, it was not automatic for everybody on deck to wear lifejackets and harnesses in those days – that became a requirement as a result of this race.’
Only 86 of 303 starting boats finished. There were 194 retirements; 25 boats sunk or were disabled and abandoned; 75 turned upside down; five boats were lost ‘believed sunk’ and 15 sailors were drowned.
Some 31 RNLI lifeboats put to sea, served 170 hours and towed or escorted 18 yachts, with more than 100 aboard, to safety. At the height of the storm, Baltimore lifeboat was at sea for 24 hours and Courtmacsherry’s for 20 hours.
The rescue was co-ordinated by the Irish and UK Coast Guards. An incredible 4,000 personnel were involved, including British, Irish and Dutch naval vessels and aircraft. The RNLI, Royal Navy and RAF led the way.
Said an RNLI spokesman: ‘It is certain that, without the selfless determination of these courageous rescuers, the death toll would have been even higher.’
The disaster led to ‘significant changes and improvements’ to yacht design, safety measures and equipment.
Crews must now pre-qualify for Ocean races. They must have VHF radio and safety harnesses. Yachts have been re-engineered to give more stability and crews are advised not to abandon ship until sinking is inevitable.
Technical advances have led to the introduction of global positioning satelleite (GPS) equipment and personal locator beacons.
Race organisers the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) remembered the dead of 40 years ago at a special service last weekend in Cowes, overlooking the starting line for the race.
The RORC will also be hosting an exhibition of paintings by artist Dad Llywelyn Hall entitled ‘Fastnet – a portrait’ at the RORC’s London headquarters at 20 St James’s Pl in south-west London from September 16th to 22nd.
Artwork will be available to buy and donations from each sale will be made to the RNLI.
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Did Matt Sheahan let his friends down?
Originally published in The Sunday Times
Thirty years ago, when Matthew Sheahan was 17, he nearly drowned at sea. He survived — only to watch his father’s dead body drift away from the boat they were racing, never to be seen again.
The Sheahans were sailing in the 600-mile Fastnet race from Cowes to Plymouth via the Fastnet rock off southern Ireland, in August 1979. Soon after they passed Land’s End a furious storm arrived, wreaking havoc on more than 300 boats taking part and leading to the greatest air-and-sea rescue of modern times.
Altogether, 15 race crew and six other sailors in the area were killed.
Nick Ward, one of the abandoned men, published a hair-raising and award-winning account two years ago: Left for Dead drew inevitable comparisons with Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, in which one mountaineer cut himself free from his injured friend. The tone was angry and hurt: after nearly three decades, clearly he hadn’t been able to forgive and forget. Now Matt Sheahan, stung by what he regards as accusations of cowardice and betrayal, has decided to go public with his side of the story. “I’ve felt mounting pressure,” he says bitterly. “If I don’t speak now, what has been published so far will become fact by default.”
Born in 1962, he looks rather older than 47. As you would expect of a sailor, his freckled skin shows sun damage — rosy colour and large areas of flaking skin. But he also has prematurely white hair: it’s tempting, if foolish, to suggest this has something to do with his experiences 30 years ago.
He started sailing when he was five, in Surrey. His father David — head of finance at a computing company in London — had been a keen long-distance cyclist until he was hit by a lorry, so he tried sailing instead and took his eldest son with him. (There were two other children, never quite so keen on boats.)
Father and son grew into the sport together and graduated from inland sailing on dinghies to sailing at sea on ever larger boats — so big, eventually, that they needed additional crew for their weekend-long adventures across the Channel.
In 1978, David Sheahan bought Grimalkin to sail in the following year’s Fastnet. A sailing club friend, Gerry Winks, 35, joined their crew and through advertising they found three others: Mike Doyle and Nick Ward, both 24, and 19-year-old Dave Wheeler. By the time of the race the six had sailed together a great deal in Grimalkin.
Matt was beside himself. The Fastnet would be far harder and more thrilling than the races they’d done before. “Anybody can cope with the lack of sleep for 24 hours,” he explains. “But a six-day race like the Fastnet is different. The first night you don’t sleep from sheer excitement. The second, you’re thinking: Jesus, how will we cope? The third, you sleep soundly . . .”
That’s not how it turned out. The race started on August 11. Two days later, winds were reported at force 6, with gusts of force 7. Forecasters predicted much worse to come that night.
As Sheahan describes it now, the wind rapidly shifted by more than 90 degrees, so that mountainous waves ran in one direction with other mountainous waves running across them, in an unpredictable pattern. Some of the waves were 80ft high. Worse, they were breaking at the top — dropping vast quantities of water on boats in the troughs below.
First, David Sheahan tried riding Grimalkin along the waves. Then he rode across them. But it was dark, the swells were unpredictable. At one point, Grimalkin slid down the face of one wave just as another appeared in front (“like a roadblock”, Matt recalls), causing the boat to somersault through 360 degrees and chucking the crew into the water.
“Solid water and bubbles rushed past my face,” Matt says. “My limbs streamed out as I was towed underwater by my harness line. I had no idea which way was up or what would happen next.”
The boat righted itself and somehow he got back on board.
In some situations, the decision to call for help is easy because a single catastrophe has occurred. But sailors don’t (or didn’t then) issue maydays just because of a strong breeze. When the breeze becomes a storm, they struggle on and even being washed overboard several times doesn’t justify packing it in.
By dawn, however, everybody was cold and worn out and increasingly incapable of making rational decisions. So at six o’clock David Sheahan went below with his son to radio for help.
The cabin was in chaos: food, equipment, internal ballast and even joinery tumbled about freely. As David sent out his message, Matt heard a dreadful rumble and the boat did another 360-degree roll. As it came upright, he found his father slumped over the chart table, unconscious and bleeding from the head. He had been hit by a tin of food.
Matt remembers cradling his father, who mumbled incoherently. “He winced as I sprayed plastic skin onto the gash. It was the last definite response I got from him,” he says.
In Left for Dead, Nick Ward describes Matt at this moment as terrified: “He was distraught, his eyes wide with fear, his face pallid and drawn.” The disasters continued. The radio stopped working after the antenna broke. The flares, let off by hands numbed with cold, fired uselessly into the waves. This is when the crew started to argue about whether to launch the life-raft. Matt, the de facto skipper aged just 17 — yet to take his driving test or his A-levels — tried to consult his semi-conscious father. Then a wave turned Grimalkin upside down.
Matt came to, trapped under the side of the boat by his harness, with insufficient slack to get his head above water unless — unpredictably — the waves dipped. To release his harness, he had to take off his inflated life-jacket. It was a struggle, but he managed. Then he saw Dave Wheeler nearby. “I was elated,” he says. He had assumed that he was the only one to get clear from under the boat.
Meanwhile, trapped under the boat, Mike had found himself in a pocket of air and heard Matt’s father shouting for help. Mike opened his knife and cut first David Sheahan’s lifeline, the rope which tied his harness to the boat, then his own. When he surfaced, Mike saw Matt’s father again, a few feet from the boat, shouting for help. Mike had to decide whether to swim to help David, or towards the boat. He chose survival, swimming to the boat and climbing onto the hull and, in doing so, turning the boat the right way up.
The force of the boat righting itself hurled Matt back inside, where he landed on top of Gerry and Nick in the cockpit. “They lay motionless in the bottom, which was swilling with water,” he recalls. “Nick’s face and lips were blue. Gerry had a facial injury.” Standing up, Matt found himself looking over the cockpit at a body face down in the water, already 50ft or so upwind. “I knew instantly who it was. I knew, too, that he had drowned.”
There was an odd silence: the mast had broken and although the storm still raged there was no longer the terrifying noise of wind whistling in the rigging.
He turned to help Dave Wheeler aboard, then stumbled across the cockpit to pull Mike up the other side. Then he watched blankly as the boat gradually distanced itself from his drowned father. “I was numb, exhausted, in shock and bewildered. You don’t know what to think. The storm was so ridiculously overwhelming, unbelievable . . . It was like watching a film.”
He snapped out of it when Mike, convinced that Grimalkin was about to sink, urged him to get into the life-raft. Mike was already in, as was Dave. Nick and Gerry remained motionless in the water swilling in the cockpit.
It was the most important decision Matt would ever make.
“My instinct was to stay on the boat,” says Matt. “My father and I had frequently repeated the quip we had heard about stepping up to the life-raft from the masthead” — at the very last moment as it sinks.
All the same, he stepped into the life-raft, which for the next hour or so spun the three men up and down the sides of the steep waves like a terrifying fairground ride.
It is harrowing to read Nick’s description of coming to and finding himself alone with Gerry. At first he thought Gerry was dead, but then he managed to revive him — clearing the snot and vomit from his mouth and feeling the sandpapery rasp of his whiskers as he gave the kiss of life. He prayed, and chuntered aimlessly, to keep Gerry alive for as long as he could.
However, Sheahan says the coroner’s report indicates that Gerry had died while the boat was upside down.
Who is right? Nobody will ever know.
We’ve all been struck, at times, by the way our own recollection of events clashes with other people’s. In a case like this, those discrepancies can cause the most terrible pain for decades afterwards.
On the boat Nick successively boiled with anger at the idea that he and Gerry had been abandoned, then sank into despairing guilt at the thought that perhaps his crewmates had drowned.
It did not make him exactly happy, when he was eventually rescued by helicopter, to discover that his friends were alive. Instead of rejoicing he felt — quite understandably — angry and resentful.
In the immediate aftermath, Nick overcame those mixed feelings sufficiently to visit the Sheahan family, go to church with them, accompany Matt to Ireland to recover Grimalkin and even to visit the manufacturers of the life-raft with him. But gradually his suspicions drove a wedge between Nick and the other survivors. How could they leave him? Why couldn’t they have felt his pulse?
To which the answer, from Matt, is that “it’s impossible to feel a pulse with numb fingers”. Sheahan doesn’t much go in for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Perhaps sailors never do. But it’s a little frustrating to listen as he skirts around the emotional highs and lows.
When I ask about his first face-to-face encounter with his mother, after the loss of his father, his reply begins with a hanging clause that is calculated to take us past that and back onto a boat. “One of the first things she said to me after we had gone through the agony of it all, without me asking, was, ‘What you must know is that if you want to carry on sailing, or give up, I’m entirely behind you’.”
He took her at her word and — amazingly — went out racing again three days later. Two weeks after that he was back at sea, racing to Le Havre. Then he happened to meet a man who owned the prototype of Grimalkin and invited him to sail in it: “It was only a couple of weeks later that I raced with him in that identical boat. It was bloody good, it got me back into the saddle.”
Two years later Matt took part in the next Fastnet race, too. His boat won the Clarion cup for the best-placed British entry by handicap.
It’s said that near-death experiences can make people less cautious afterwards. Matt broadly agrees: he has since taken up skiing and gliding as well: “Some people think I’m a thrill-seeker. I’m not, but I was lucky that I was young enough to be able to heal quickly. If it had happened to me now, two years older than my father was when he died, I’m not sure I’d cope.”
It is not entirely surprising that he seems relatively unmoved by the events of Fastnet 1979: after all, it happened half a lifetime ago and he has told the story (if only to himself) many times since then. What is much more recent is the accusation of abandonment in Nick’s book — and on this subject Matt’s feelings are clearly as raw as his skin: “Nick talks about the three of us snubbing him. He suggests there was a pact between us never to talk about this again, as if it was shameful . . . There wasn’t.”
Matt seems not to have noticed — or not to value — the more conciliatory passages in Nick’s book. Towards the end of Left for Dead, Nick recalls talking to Matt soon after they were rescued and learning that he had watched his father’s dead body drift away. “Hearing this from Matt was shocking. I really felt for him. Whoever had cut the line did it to save David’s life, but in doing so there was always the risk that he would be washed away.” Impressively, aged just 17, Matt protected the identity of the crewman who had cut the lifeline. “I respected him for that,” Nick writes.
Matt continued to protect Mike for nearly three decades and has gone public with the detail only after running into Mike again last year and talking it all through at length.
Plainly, Mike still hadn’t got over what happened but he seems to have come to terms with it now. For his own part, Matt still doesn’t know how he would react in the same circumstances. “But what I do know is that it’s damned easy to be wise after the event,” he says. “Mike did what he believed was right at the time. It felt good to be able to look him in the eye — and to tell him that he did the right thing.”
Dog Portraits
The Fastnet Race Disaster: Navy Heroes Speak 40 Years On
A helicopter crewman hangs from a winch to check the battered yacht Grimalkin for possible survivors (Picture: PA).
Competitors in the 1979 Fastnet Race were in the middle of a 605-mile yachting event, from Cowes to Fastnet Rock and then to Plymouth, when an unexpected storm wreaked havoc.
With hundreds of sailors facing life-threating conditions, the Royal Navy sent emergency calls to anyone with rescue experience, an urgent plea to help with what would become the UK's largest peacetime rescue-mission.
The storm took 19 lives in total, though 130 were saved by efforts from the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.
As part of the massive rescue operation, 15 RNAS Culdrose helicopters flew for 200 hours to save 75 stranded sailors.
Albie Fox, a former Royal Navy Wessex pilot, was woken at 5am on 11 August 1979, during the 28th Fastnet Race.
“The phone call was, 'all hell is breaking loose, could you get your backside in here, Sir?'”
Mr Fox's crew were sent flying, tasked with finding the 'Camargh' vessel.
“She was in dire straits, her rigging was flapping… her mast was going backward and forward so there was no way we could lift them off the deck.
"We had to persuade them to dive one at a time into the water."
The crew then hooked each person on to a harness, bringing them onboard the aircraft one-by-one.
Watch: Albie Fox spoke to Forces News about his mission
Keith Thompson, a former Sea King Pilot with the Royal Navy, was also part of the operation after receiving the call-out from the service.
Taking note of the vessels in danger, the scale of the emergency soon became clear.
"I was writing on my knee pad with a chinagraph pencil and running out… I started to write on the windscreen of the helicopter."
Although there were a number of vessels to look out for, the amount of water to be searched provided a huge challenge, time continuing to run down.
The Sea King crew were told that 10 to 12 yachts could be found “anywhere between land’s end and the Fastnet rock."
“You could see the ashen look on their faces, the relief of being somewhere safe, out of the water.”
Watch: Keith Thompson told Forces News about the challenge facing his team in 1979
At the time, RNAS Culdrose was on summer leave, a lot of equipment undergoing maintenance, a rescue operation was a tall order.
Conditions were pushing the aircraft available to their limits.
"We normally do a 40-foot, automatic hover, the Sea King couldn’t cope with that because the waves were about 40-feet high as well."
The sea was so rough, so much white water and big waves, it was very difficult to spot anything in the water.
Adrenaline and a high sense of responsibility pushed the teams to continue non-stop with their search, only feeling the exhaustion at the end of the day.
"We did two, four-hour trips… we just kept going…"
Over the next couple of days, Mr Thompson and his crew flew back over the scene several times, double-checking that any remaining vessels had in fact been evacuated.
For Mr Fox, the search continues to be replayed in his head to this day:
“I flew 13 hours on that day… It’s the thing that always haunted me – that I might have flown over somebody.
“For a few years after that event, it obviously played on my mind, knowing that we may have flown over somebody and not seen them.”
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IMAGES
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In 1979 Matthew Sheahan, aged 17, was racing his father's yacht Grimalkin in the Fastnet Race. After being rolled, pitchpoled, battered and half drowned, and believing the rest of the crew to be ...
Nic Compton investigates how the UK's worst sailing disaster - the 1979 Fastnet Race - changed the way yachts are designed. ... But of course Grimalkin wasn't the only yacht to have succumbed to the Force 10 winds that ravaged the fleet that year. By the end of the 1979 Fastnet race, 24 boats had been abandoned, five boats had sunk, 136 ...
Memorial to those who died in the 1979 Fastnet Race, Lissarnona, Cape Clear Island, Cork, Ireland The 1979 Fastnet Race was the 28th Royal Ocean Racing Club's Fastnet Race, a yachting race held generally every two years since 1925 on a 605-nautical-mile (1,120 km; 696 mi) course from Cowes direct to the Fastnet Rock and then to Plymouth via south of the Isles of Scilly.
For skipper David Sheahan and his 17-year-old son, Matthew, on Grimalkin - one of the smallest boats (named after the witches' cat in Macbeth) - it was 'the biggest challenge of their lives'.. Founded in 1925, the six-day Fastnet race follows a 608-mile course to the Fastnet Rock, the most southerly point of Ireland, and back to Plymouth, via the Scilly Isles.
Fastnet disaster 40 years on: 'We were lucky, many who left their boats lost their lives' The 1979 Fastnet yacht race claimed the lives of 19 people as crews battled a raging storm.
In 1978, David Sheahan bought Grimalkin to sail in the following year's Fastnet. A sailing club friend, Gerry Winks, 35, joined their crew and through advertising they found three others: Mike Doyle and Nick Ward, both 24, and 19-year-old Dave Wheeler. By the time of the race the six had sailed together a great deal in Grimalkin.
A helicopter crewman hangs from a winch to check the battered yacht Grimalkin for possible survivors (Picture: PA). Competitors in the 1979 Fastnet Race were in the middle of a 605-mile yachting event, from Cowes to Fastnet Rock and then to Plymouth, when an unexpected storm wreaked havoc.
Thirty years ago, he lived through unimaginable horror on board the 30ft yacht Grimalkin as she was pounded in a storm that claimed the lives of 15 competitors. ... The crew on board Grimalkin had trained together and as they left the Solent in August 1979, heading out on the 609 mile course, they were in a good position.
Matthew Sheahan was only 17 when he entered the 1979 Fastnet race on his father's yacht, Grimalkin. The 608-mile (978 km) course started in near perfect conditions, but for the crew of Grimalkin it ended in tragedy as they battled to survive one of the worst storms to hit an ocean yacht race.
Curiously the skipper's son and also part of the Grimalkin's crew, Mattew Sheahan (then with 17) is a prominent tester and Journalist for Yachting World Magazine. After a life racing sailboats he likes a lot what he calls the "Pogo factor" and has been responsible, among the rather conservative British nautical press, for a fresh new look ...