It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime for SCOTT NEUMAN: sailing from Hong Kong to Thailand. Days later, he was in the middle of a typhoon. In the first of a three-part series, Neuman relives the terrifying voyage.
Scott Neuman, day three, down but not out. (AP Photo/Courtesy Scott Neuman)
Our nearly destroyed South China Sea passage chart, showing Da Nang, left divider point, and approximate location of dismasting, right point. (AP Photo/Courtesy Scott Neuman)
The only photograph of that moment is the one forever fixed in my brain: Looking forward, I saw the cresting water curl over, burying the cabin and foredeck in a blur of foam.
My boat, Eroica, rolled a good 90 degrees, pitching John over the side, his safety harness straining to keep him from being washed to certain death. He managed to clamor aboard, we both glanced up at the cabin, and then at each other: "There goes the mast."
Grabbing bolt cutters from the cockpit, I went forward, removing the boom. It dropped overboard and tugged like a large fish at the single line that still held it. I hesitated for a few moments before cutting the rigging.
That's it, I thought, our voyage from Hong Kong to Thailand was ending ignominiously off the coast of Vietnam.
Days of battling 30- to 40-foot seas and near hurricane-force wind had sapped my strength. With a sense of defeat, I sliced with surprising ease at the stainless steel wire that pinned the stump of the mast to the cabin top.
We had several days to go.
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It wasn't supposed to be like this.
For the past year and a half I had been preparing for the trip, after buying the boat -- an aging, 28-foot fiberglass sloop -- in Hong Kong. She was everything I had been looking for in a boat, a fixer-upper that I renamed Eroica after the Beethoven Symphony.
Typhoon Kai Tak was merely a low pressure area when sailing buddy John Magel, a Thailand-based charter captain, and I departed Hong Kong on October 28. Finding a good "weather window" for the trip had always been a bit of a crapshoot. I had pored over passage charts and the British Admiralty's sailing instructions trying to find the right time to go.
On the night before our departure, the low hadn't concerned us too much. Even if it turned into a typhoon, we reasoned, it was likely to track west and be out of the way well before we reached that stretch of ocean.
A few hours after we departed, the Japanese meteorological service gave what seemed to be an innocent-looking low the ominous number W22 and the designation tropical depression -- the toddler stage of a typhoon. After initially forecasting a westerly track -- just as John and I had -- the meteorologists soon changed their prediction to northwesterly, sending the storm skirting up along the Vietnamese coast, directly into our path.
But by then we were already well out to sea, with no idea yet what we were facing.
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That first night, Orion awoke from his repose on the eastern horizon, languidly raising his shield and sword for the hunt; the summer triangle passed overhead -- Deneb, Vega and Altair. Venus was so bright that she cast her own moonlike shine on the water.
A (not so tall) ship and a star to steer her by. What more could one ask for?
By day two, the 29th, the rising waves were just part of the challenge -- a bit exhilarating. The boat rose gently to each swell.
As the seas that day became more confused, however, it became harder to steer. I used our satellite phone to call in our position to the only number I could easily reach, the Associated Press Asia-Pacific Desk in Bangkok. The connection was crackly and I didn't want to stay on too long for fear of running down the battery. But apparently, a colleague had noted a typhoon off Vietnam and passed the word to the person on the phone.
Days later, in front of a computer and safely ashore, the satellite imagery of Typhoon Kai Tak made our situation crystal clear: The low that we had seen on the weather charts quickly turned into a swirling hydra that engulfed most of the South China Sea.
It was heading straight for us.
TOMORROW: A typhoon takes the driver's seat.
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asap contributor Scott Neuman is an editor on the Asia-Pacific desk for The Associated Press in Bangkok, Thailand.
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