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"Rescue Story"
by Rasmus Wiman

(from the e-mail posted to WML)

Well, I have had one of these scary experiences. I live in Sweden, which means the best winds are usually during late fall when air and water starts getting really cold. This was a day in late September 1994. It was VERY windy in town, so I went out to the beach to get rigged. Both air and water temperature was around 10 degrees (centigrade). On the beach, the wind was less than impressive. Weak and slightly offshore, people used sails between 5 and 6.5 m^2, and were still schlogging the first 500 meters or so before the wind kicked in. I rigged my 5.7, took my little brothers Tiga 275 ACR, put on my short-sleeved wetsuit, probably with the removable arms in place, and went out.

After the initial schloggning, sailing was good and as long as I didn't come too close to the shore. Suddenly, however, I crashed on the outside gybe. I didn't think too much of it and instantly tried to waterstart. I realised that the reason why I had crashed was not my usual clumsyness, but the fact that the wind had changed directin ever so slightly, which meant that it was no longer off-shore and thus hit the lake with full force. In less than a second, the wind had started blowing twice as hard, it was now some 20-25 m/s. Waterstarting was impossible, uphauling worked, but sheeting in was impossible and I had no control whatsoever. After some thought I concluded that swimming was the only practical option. Wisely enough I didn't abandon my board (NEVER EVER abandon your board if you can avoid it), but this meant swimming was slower. It took me somewhere between half an hour and an hour to reach the shore and I was very cold and I had the sensation of general exhaustion that marks beginning hypothermia. People started getting out on 3.5 sails while I was swimming, but noone saw me, I was far upwind.

On the shore I met the other people who were out when I arrived to the beach. They had all had to swim ashore. One guy was particularly unlucky. He was rather new to the sport and had followed a piece of safety advice which is taught in Swedish windsurfing schools which I find totally useless: He had de-rigged his sail so he could roll the sail around the mast and the battens and then use the mast as a paddle. Nice in theory, it means that you risk losing your gear, and of course he lost his rig. He had then tried to paddle in, but he soon became tired. He was the only one to get rescued, somone saw him and towed him in somehow. When he was found, he wasn't trying to paddle anymore, so he was just drifting.

End of story for my part, but the same wind that put us in this trouble made a large passenger boat called Estonia sank a couple of hours later, with over 900 people drowned. When I heard that, I was unable to react. My only thought was "So I'm not the only one who's had to swim". The difference was of course that they had to swim for six hours without wetsuits, some of them were probably drunk, while I went swimming for one hour with a wetsuit and a windsurfing equipment to keep me floating.

Three days later, the wind had increased even more, but this time I ran into no problems and I hade one of the finest sailing days in my life, just doung duckjibe after duckjibe for hours. I was happy, my confidence was back.

My conclusion of what happened that day is that when you're out sailing, you're always on your own. Noone will notice if you run into trouble, so noone will help you. If something goes wrong, you MUST know how to get out of the water. Also, the colder the water, the more this applies, because very few people sail when the days become shorter and the sea becomes colder. I have seen people sail on new year's day in Sweden, when the water temperature was only one or two degrees above zero. DO play safe if you sail in conditions like that. If you can't do a forward loop with your eyes shut, don't even think of doing any loops in such conditions.

(30.01.01)

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