Status Updates From Fastnet, Force 10: The Dead...

The gravity of these stories is undeniably powerful, but it makes reading some of the funnier phrasing ("fatal pooping,"..."Cottage cheese became a lethal weapon") like trying not to laugh in church.

One-third said that entry of water was a problem; 11 percent said that the amount of water in the boat affected the decisions that were made. Serious injuries occurred below in 5% of the boats, almost all of them during rollovers. Eleven percent of the respondents experienced at least one instance of safety harness failure. Twelve life rafts were washed overboard, and of the fifteen that were used, five capsized.

Conservatively assuming that only half of those boats—thirty-eight—were actually rolled over entirely, one-eighth of the entire Fastnet fleet still experienced the catastrophe of a complete capsize.

Also, having been bailing the boat for a long time, we would probably have been too exhausted to cope with another knockdown.

I also feel it is worth mentioning the terrific feeling of security once we were in the life raft, and I’m sure that the psychological boost gained from this enabled us to keep going for a few minutes longer—very valuable moments in my case.

Possibly in an effort to avoid sensationalism or just a result of the number of boats and crew and the similarities between them, Rousmaniere describes deaths and losses of crew mechanically. It's much easier to remember the names of boats that hit the worst conditions than what they were or who may have been lost when we get to the final chapter. Given how much dry technical description he used, it's disappointing

“If we still value the qualities of daring, comradeship, and endurance in our national life we should cherish the sports which foster them with the risks they carry. The lessons of Fastnet should be studied calmly and applied sensibly but in the knowledge that they can never expel danger from yachting and the conviction that it will be a sad and bad day when this seafaring people declines the challenge of the ocean.”

“...I feel a little like Noah. I knew that the flood was coming, and I had a boat ready that would get me through it."

At any other time, Ted Turner’s glorying in his boat, his first-place trophy, and himself might have been interpreted as a successful athlete’s boyish pride, but in the context of the Fastnet race tragedies it was widely viewed as insensitive and callous.

Hunt slowly crawled up the ladder and into the hands of Nanna’s crew. Finally secure, he looked down and, to his horror, saw that David Crisp, halfway up the ladder, was still attached to the life raft by the tether of his safety harness. The life raft jerked away from the ship, the tether tightened and pulled Crisp down into the water, and he, Bill LeFevre, and the raft were swept under the ship’s stern.

Ferris was the next to try to escape from the sea. He unhooked his safety harness from the life raft and lunged, half swimming, for the bottom rungs of the ladder, but he failed. Either missing the rungs or smashed by the rolling coaster, or both, Hal Ferris was swept away. His crew last saw him fifty yards away.