Stuart Quarrie's story

By the time the midnight forecast came through [on 14 August] that said it would be much windier, it was already seriously windy. It wasn't seriously rough, though - it was still building at that stage. We got the mainsail down and sorted ourselves out with a heavy weather jib. We were still racing, only later did we go into survival mode.

When we did, we decided we would run up the Irish Sea until the storm had blown itself out. The wind and seas built and built very quickly until we started getting some waves coming in from the north-westerly direction that were very hard to handle.

We took the jib off completely. It was in a luff foil and getting that down was a nightmare - three people on the foredeck for what seemed forever. I was steering and the waves now were foaming crests. Most were manageable but the occasional one would come out of leftfield and try to broach us.

I remember absolutely vividly to this day one huge wave that hadn't broken. There was lots of phosphorescence around that night and this wave was a blackness in the shimmery green of the broken waves. It seemed to come at 90° to the rest of the wavetrain. I tried to turn downwind but we didn't have enough boatspeed. It hit us nearly abeam.

That's the last I remember of that wave because I was washed out of the boat. My harness clip opened up - the hook got caught sideways in the D-ring and came undone and I went swimming.

Luckily, I could see the lifebuoy light flashing away and that's what I swam back to. When I got back to it I found that it was still firmly in its clips on the back of the boat, upside down. If the boat hadn't turned upside down, I'd have drowned.

Nobody was around. Neil swam out from the air bubble beneath the cockpit. Eventually the boat settled down in the water and another wave came along and it righted itself. But by then the cabin was two-thirds full of water and the cockpit was awash. Neil said the classic "Man the pumps!" so we pumped a few gallons out until another wave came along and dumped another 100 gallons in.

The washboards had fallen out during the capsize and gone. The boat was almost awash and sluggishly unstable and we decided that we would have to abandon ship. We know we made the right decision because when we got the liferaft inflated and got in, before we cut the painter and got half a wave away we saw the forehatch pop out with the water pressure and the boat sank.

This had all happened within a couple of hours of the midnight forecast. The scariest thing was how quickly it all developed. From sailing along with the spinnaker to sinking was about four hours.

After we'd got in the liferaft we let off one parachute flare. We streamed the drogue but as it took up the load it pulled off its fastening. So then we were being picked up by the waves and surfing down the wave crests, spinning round totally out of control then ending up at the bottom in a banana shape. It would pop back into a circular shape and the next wave would come along. It was a real mad fairground ride.

A big wave came and turned the liferaft turned upside down. It all went eerily quiet and calm. Two of the crew had been flicked out through the entrance and we didn't know where they were. Eventually the liferaft righted itself but there was so much water in the canopy that it came off. The crew who had been clinging on outside got back in. We were sitting up to our armpits in water and one guy had been in jeans and T-shirt quickly got very cold and was semi-conscious. We sat there being seasick and waiting for morning, or dying.

Then we saw Lorelei. [Alain Catherineau and the crew of French yacht Lorelei had seen the flare and altered course]. She came through the same wave trough we were in. Had she been a wave away we wouldn't have seen each other, so quite apart from their seamanship it was bloody lucky. We fired off the rest of our parachute flares in the space of about 30 seconds.

After four attempts [Catherineau] managed to stop more or less alongside us on the upwind side and threw a whole lot of lines criss-cross over us and we pulled ourselves across and swam on to the sidedeck and were bustled down below. The unconscious guy was pulled on board.

The skipper of Lorelei and his mate were really well organised and within minutes we had the welcoming sight of a kettle being put on and hot cups of tea being made. But we were sitting there, on the eight-man liferaft, now 13 of us on board, thinking ‘This boat is only 2ft longer than ours. What if this all happens again?'

But Lorelei was a very different boat, not nearly as fast downwind but a more inherently stable hull design. The crew retired from the race and turned back, dawn came and the gale had gone - huge leftover seas but not breaking any more. Eventually the crew put on more and more sail and we had a nice sail back to Plymouth.

I went sailing again eight days later and the first time I had anything approaching bad weather I was very nervous. It didn't put me off, but for years afterwards I had nightmares about that one big wave coming in and grabbing me.

Griffin was never seen again. The Doug Petersen OOD 34 was severely criticised for its stability characteristics. Alain Catherineau was awarded the YJA Yachtsman of the Year trophy that year for his seamanship during the rescue. Stuart Quarrie still sails offshore for pleasure and is now CEO of Cowes Week Ltd.