The story of Alan Ker
- Mon, 12 Oct 2009
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We were prepared for a very rough night but we didn't have any inkling how rough it was going to be. As we cleared the Scillies the wind was picking up from the west and as the front came through there was heavy rain, until that cleared and it became bright moonlight over an extremely stormy sea. At that point we were starting to say "Well, that looks like page 49 of Adlard Coles's Heavy Weather Sailing.'
Until the front came through the sea conditions were reasonably OK; they were getting big, but they were regular and they had a good pattern. We gradually slabbed the main down to the smallest size and a small storm jib. Some time later the storm jib disintegrated and we sailed on under a three-reefed main.
At 0200 we started to see other yachts that were not continuing to race and we passed two or three other boats lying ahull or hove to. Once the front went through the seas became extremely confused. My feeling was there were two intersecting wave systems and it was really difficult to read.
At about that time we had a couple of knockdowns. We certainly had one situation when we were beyond horizontal. But we didn't see it as a major issue. We were all of the same mind: that it was really, really rough and this was the sort of thing that was going to happen, so when we were knocked down we were kind of expecting it.
There was a certain amount of damage. We lost the hatch off the anchor well forward and we had a lot of gear rolling around in the cabin. I was in my bunk at the time. The two people on deck were secured by chest lines from a spare genoa sheet so when we were knocked down they said it was very interesting but not too much of a problem. The Contessa 32 has a very extreme stability curve so it can go well below the horizontal and still roll back up the right way, so we never did a complete roll, though I have to say that subsequently my father has.
We didn't consider stopping as an option so we just carried on. I thought maintaining a course towards the Fastnet was the seamanlike thing to do because all the time it was giving us more sea room up the St George's Channel if we did have to run off or lie ahull. Any attempt to turn south and run towards Land's End was going to be problematical.
By dawn we had aircraft flying over us and passed a dismasted yacht and stayed with them for about half an hour. We saw the guardship HMS Scylla when we went back past the Scillies and although we didn't have a VHF we knew there was a lot going on.
We were going as fast as we could in a Contessa and from the Scillies back to Plymouth we averaged over 8 knots which, for a boat like that, was quite good going. We wrecked the spinnaker running in quite a swell when we broached and it all came apart. I wasn't too popular afterwards - my father wasn't very happy.
It was only when we got to Plymouth we knew how serious the situation had been, and we knew almost immediately. When we came into Millbay Docks in the dark there wasn't anybody else about and Fiona Wylie went up to the race office and came straight back and said: "It looks pretty serious. We're the only finisher [in our class] and there are a lot of casualties."
I think the characteristics of the Contessa 32 played a very large part and subsequently gave my father the confidence to do things which, in another boat, you might have considered unwise. Where he has been and what he has done worldwide since has been in part because of that.
Alan Ker and his crew won their class. In Assent his father, Willie, has circumnavigated Iceland, sailed to Greenland and Baffin Island several times, cruised to the Antarctic and up to Alaska and Russia, returning via the Great Lakes and Labrador. Most of his sailing is single-handed and this summer he is making a solo voyage in Assent to Greenland, Baffin Island and back, aged 85.
