Crewmember Bob Butcher steers Benjamin Franklin in high winds and seas as the authors diverted around the eye of Hurricane Karen.
Bercaw and Hallstein met aboard schooner Westward while sailing for the Sea Education Association, for which both now sail as captains. They planned to start in Woods Hole, Mass., proceed through the Panama Canal, and on to Pitcairn Island via the Galapagos. From Pitcairn, the plan was to sail south to enjoy the Westerlies in the Southern Ocean with the cruise track west to east through Drake Passage en route to the Falkland Islands; and then on to Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, Ascension Island, a grocery stop at Barbados and back home to Woods Hole. For two years we readied Benjamin Franklin with an enormous amount of help from others. Benjamin Franklin was prepared to sustain seven months without major reprovisioning and equipped with safety modifications and damage-control materials to respond to Southern Ocean demands. Communication equipment (SSB, Inmarsat, Iridium phone) was onboard to support the vision of distance learning for interaction with classrooms across the country. The vessel was set up for a crew of four, including Hallstein, his two sons, and Bercaw. For the leg from Woods Hole to Panama, friend Bob Butcher was to sail in the place of Hallstein’s older son, Eric Hallstein. Benjamin Franklin was hauled, the hull inspected and a beautifully engineered feathering J Prop from Canada was installed. Dehydrated food to sustain the voyage was calculated, packaged and stowed with careful attention to metabolic requirements. In early October, we departed Dyers Dock at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to the farewells of family and friends. A cold front had just passed through, and the wind was blowing from the northwest, giving us a good start toward the southeast so that we might get across the Gulf Stream and be on our way at a high-risk time of year for hurricanes. Our schedule and departure date were heavily influenced by sabbatical schedules. As we sailed down Vineyard Sound, the clear, crisp northwest wind of 35 to 40 knots was irresistible, and we continued on our way. Every minute counts when leaving the North Atlantic at this time of year. We passed Martha’s Vineyard and started south with good speed and comfort.
The first leg was planned nonstop from Woods Hole to the Panama Canal. On Oct. 10, both the weatherfax and high-seas weather broadcast identified a clear depression with open circulation a few hundred miles to the southwest of Bermuda. In the next six hours between weather broadcasts, the circulation had closed, and the central barometric pressure dropped to 986 mmHg. “Looks like a hurricane,” we said to each other. Benjamin Franklin turned west with a plan to ride a constant isobar around the depression. The boat was performing well, surfing along in 50-knot winds and approximately 40-foot seas. As the night wore on, occasional cresting seas broke over the boat. We were appreciating the double aluminum deck hatch forward and the doubled 3/4-inch Lexan companionway bulkhead as we sailed along with the storm jib and storm trysail, with the boom lashed to the gallows. Bob “Chez Butcher” created a gourmet dinner with canned meat, rice and beans topped with salt spray.
The offgoing watch checked the bilge and hand-pumped the water that had found its way into the bilge. None was visibly coming in. As Bill Hallstein lay in his bunk, he noticed that offgoing watches were always pumping, and strokes on the Henderson diaphragm pump were increasing steadily.
At 0230, with Benjamin Franklin on the same latitude and to the west of Bermuda, and with the now-named Hurricane Karen proceeding north on a reciprocal course, our storm-avoidance strategy looked good, but the water entering the bilge looked bad. Butcher announced, “We can’t ignore this anymore, you know.” Mind you, the boat is loaded with seven months worth of stuff. Stuff everywhere! We felt confident we had no rodents aboard, because there would have been no room for a single mouse.
We began to partition frames with a plan to start forward and work aft. Up came the floorboards; we set up dams between structural members in the bilge, sponged the spaces dry, and watched which way the creek was flowing. We decided that the origin of the creek was somewhere in the stern of the boat. We moved and then restowed the items in the bilge, section by section, working from forward to aft, building little dams, drying the space and working our way to the headwaters of the stream.
The seas and wind were increasing. We didn’t put a number to the wind velocity and sea height. All hands agreed that they were big! We know that sailors tend to exaggerate about these things, so we will refrain from making up numbers. From the companionway aft to the transom, equipment to be used last was stowed first, such as a rubber boat for landing at Pitcairn. Lying with his head facing aft on the quarterberth that had been converted for storage, Bill Hallstein would reach over his head, grab some cargo and slide it down across his chest toward his feet, passing it to whomever was waiting to restow farther forward. This process allowed him to wriggle toward the transom and rudderpost gland. Wearing a headlamp, he got in toward the steering gland, took a deep breath and blew out very slowly — trying to keep his heart rate and blood pressure down as the flashlight beam danced on fountains that flowed from a crack. The crack extended from the rudderpost forward approximately 12 inches. “The port skeg-hull weld let go,” Bill Hallstein said.
Envisioning the possibility of losing the vessel, we wanted to establish contact with the U.S. Coast Guard, explain the situation and reinforce the credibility of our EPIRB if it were activated. Coast Guard Camslant Chesapeake was wonderful. It was Bill Hallstein’s first experience on the distressed-vessel side of communications; in his earlier days, he had served as a Coast Guard officer. Benjamin Franklin was assigned two dedicated single-sideband frequencies not available to commercial traffic, which allowed the radio monitoring process to be efficient and clear, with minimal electrical consumption wasted by weeding through other radio traffic.
We set up a radio schedule every 30 minutes until Bill Hallstein extended that to every hour, then every two hours, and eventually to a four-hour schedule for the remaining two days to Bermuda. Coast Guard Camslant Chesapeake was supportive, professional, cheerful and, most importantly, responsive to Benjamin Franklin’s requests. Bill Hallstein scheduled radio call intervals according to his assessment of the rate of flooding, weather conditions (wind direction, sea height, barometric pressure trends) and assessment of our rate of progress (speed and direction) toward Bermuda.
Butcher reduced water flow to a rate manageable with either pump. Benjamin Franklin was equipped with two permanent manual bilge pumps, the hard-plumbed Edson 1 gallon per stroke and the smaller Henderson, the Lavac head pump that Morgan Simmons engineered with a valve diversion for bilge suction. In preparation for the trip, we chose not to place our wellbeing in the hands of electrical devices other than the communication equipment. While Butcher was in the bilge working and Bill Hallstein was on the radio, Bercaw and Trevor Hallstein continued to fly the boat on the isobar around Hurricane Karen, steering as little as possible to reduce lateral stress on the skeg.
Meanwhile, northbound Karen was wreaking destruction in Bermuda and leaving us behind. After 48 hours, our wind quit, and our seas lay down. The calm water allowed Butcher, Bercaw and Trevor Hallstein to dive and inspect the hull.
Now began the long trip of motoring to Bermuda, with the added tension created by an approaching cold front promising strong northerly winds and seas. We needed calm water and no wind to reach Bermuda successfully. The window of opportunity was small; northerly winds began blowing 30 minutes after we secured alongside in Bermuda. We had considered the alternative destination of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., approximately 850 nm to the southwest. The Coast Guard advised of deteriorating weather approaching Florida’s coast, and with our slow rate of travel, we chose the tight but favorable weather window north to Bermuda. While motoring along, we were invited to a birthday party for Butcher, for which he had stowed aboard all the required items, with his customary wisdom.
We reduced our communications with the Coast Guard to brief position reports at four-hour intervals. When communications were transferred to Danny Little at Bermuda Harbor Radio 90 miles south of the island, he said, “Benjamin Franklin, let me first tell you where you are.” With that, he provided our position with more decimal-point accuracy than our GPS! When Bill Hallstein suggested contacting and releasing Camslant Chesapeake, Little said, “I would like to do that for you. I think you have your hands full.”
That was the beginning of generous hospitality in Bermuda. Alan Burland, whose son Travis had been a student of Bercaw’s on Westward a few months before, kindly arranged for Benjamin Franklin to be hauled at St. George’s Boatyard, operated by Craig Faries. Alan and Ian Hind monitored the repair process from beginning to end, including bolstering the occasional sagging spirits of the crew. Stephen Page from Bean Engineering welded with superb skill and the eye of an artist. He was enormously concerned that everything be “completely right” so that “you go back to sea safely.”
With repairs completed, Bill Hallstein came home in December. In May of 2002, he and his sons, Eric and Trevor Hallstein, and Simmons sailed home from Bermuda in conditions not unlike the southbound trip. Immediately north of the Gulf Stream, a cold front raged from the northwest — the direction of home. We hove to for two days of good reading by the wood stove and then resumed our passage, gaining 30 miles in the “right” direction while waiting for the storm to pass.
The originally planned voyage became a successful sea trial; we leaned on the boat, found problems and fixed them. Bercaw journeyed to Pitcairn via steamer from New Zealand. He enjoyed a highly successful reunion with Pitcairners, while the crew of Benjamin Franklin looked forward to his stories.
Bill Hallstein is a physician and USCG-licensed 1,600-ton ocean master who sails as captain with the Sea Education Association of Woods Hole. Seán Bercaw has logged more than 150,000 miles at sea, ranging on vessels from small sailboats to nuclear submarines to 300-foot-tall ships. Between voyages with SEA as captain on SSV Westward, SSV Corwith Cramer and SSV Robert C. Seamans, Bercaw runs marathons, rows competitively and has built his house on Cape Cod.
For two years we readied Benjamin Franklin with an enormous amount of help from others. Benjamin Franklin was prepared to sustain seven months without major reprovisioning and equipped with safety modifications and damage-control materials to respond to Southern Ocean demands. Communication equipment (SSB, Inmarsat, Iridium phone) was onboard to support the vision of distance learning for interaction with classrooms across the country. The vessel was set up for a crew of four, including Hallstein, his two sons, and Bercaw. For the leg from Woods Hole to Panama, friend Bob Butcher was to sail in the place of Hallstein's older son, Eric Hallstein.
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A double-reefed Benjamin Franklin departs Woods Hole, Mass., riding a 35-knot northwesterly on the back of a cold front. We had check-off lists to keep track of check-off lists. Aluminum was welded, we added bulletproof handrails above and below decks, a gallows, and a cage over the companionway to support a heavy-duty dodger and to catch people who became airborne as Benjamin Franklin leapt from breaking crest to trough. The vessel's interior was revised to increase fuel and water capacity, install a watermaker, and build a full-size chart table and more storage compartments. Electrical generation was enhanced with a solar panel and taffrail water generator.
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Using the starboard quarterberth, Bob Butcher burrowed into the stern of Ben Franklin to place damage-control shoring near the stern hull fracture. Benjamin Franklin was hauled, the hull inspected and a beautifully engineered feathering J Prop from Canada was installed. Dehydrated food to sustain the voyage was calculated, packaged and stowed with careful attention to metabolic requirements.
In early October, we departed Dyers Dock at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to the farewells of family and friends. A cold front had just passed through, and the wind was blowing from the northwest, giving us a good start toward the southeast so that we might get across the Gulf Stream and be on our way at a high-risk time of year for hurricanes. Our schedule and departure date were heavily influenced by sabbatical schedules.
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Trevor Hallstein and his father Bill in the boat's companionway after Trevor cooked a rousing pancake and ham breakfast. Explaining the motive for the feast, Trevor remarked, "If we're going to sink, let's not waste good food.?VbCrLf As we sailed down Vineyard Sound, the clear, crisp northwest wind of 35 to 40 knots was irresistible, and we continued on our way. Every minute counts when leaving the North Atlantic at this time of year. We passed Martha's Vineyard and started south with good speed and comfort.
The first leg was planned nonstop from Woods Hole to the Panama Canal. On Oct. 10, both the weatherfax and high-seas weather broadcast identified a clear depression with open circulation a few hundred miles to the southwest of Bermuda. In the next six hours between weather broadcasts, the circulation had closed, and the central barometric pressure dropped to 986 mmHg. "Looks like a hurricane," we said to each other. Benjamin Franklin turned west with a plan to ride a constant isobar around the depression. The boat was performing well, surfing along in 50-knot winds and approximately 40-foot seas. As the night wore on, occasional cresting seas broke over the boat. We were appreciating the double aluminum deck hatch forward and the doubled 3/4-inch Lexan companionway bulkhead as we sailed along with the storm jib and storm trysail, with the boom lashed to the gallows. Bob "Chez Butcher" created a gourmet dinner with canned meat, rice and beans topped with salt spray.
The offgoing watch checked the bilge and hand-pumped the water that had found its way into the bilge. None was visibly coming in. As Bill Hallstein lay in his bunk, he noticed that offgoing watches were always pumping, and strokes on the Henderson diaphragm pump were increasing steadily.
At 0230, with Benjamin Franklin on the same latitude and to the west of Bermuda, and with the now-named Hurricane Karen proceeding north on a reciprocal course, our storm-avoidance strategy looked good, but the water entering thebilge looked bad. Butcher announced, "We can't ignore this anymore, you know." Mind you, the boat is loaded with seven months worth of stuff. Stuff everywhere! We felt confident we had no rodents aboard, because there would have been no room for a single mouse.
We began to partition frames with a plan to start forward and work aft. Up came the floorboards; we set up dams between structural members in the bilge, sponged the spaces dry, and watched which way the creek was flowing. We decided that the origin of the creek was somewhere in the stern of the boat. We moved and then restowed the items in the bilge, section by section, working from forward to aft, building little dams, drying the space and working our way to the headwaters of the stream.
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The hull plate fracture just forward of the rudderpost gland in Benjamin Franklin's stern, seen after the boat was hauled in Bermuda and the damage-control repairs were removed. The seas and wind were increasing. We didn't put a number to the wind velocity and sea height. All hands agreed that they were big! We know that sailors tend to exaggerate about these things, so we will refrain from making up numbers. From the companionway aft to the transom, equipment to be used last was stowed first, such as a rubber boat for landing at Pitcairn. Lying with his head facing aft on the quarterberth that had been converted for storage, Bill Hallstein would reach over his head, grab some cargo and slide it down across his chest toward his feet, passing it to whomever was waiting to restow farther forward. This process allowed him to wriggle toward the transom and rudderpost gland. Wearing a headlamp, he got in toward the steering gland, took a deep breath and blew out very slowly &mdash trying to keep his heart rate and blood pressure down as the flashlight beam danced on fountains that flowed from a crack. The crack extended from the rudderpost forward approximately 12 inches. "The port skeg-hull weld let go," Bill Hallstein said.
Things had been easy up to this point; now the lads had a project. We divvied up our assignments: Bercaw and Trevor Hallstein on deck sailing; Butcher on damage control with lumber, underwater epoxy, block and tackle, and improvised Spanish windlass with the goal of leapfrogging stress to the frames outboard of the crack. Bill Hallstein handled communications.
Envisioning the possibility of losing the vessel, we wanted to establish contact with the U.S. Coast Guard, explain the situation and reinforce the credibility of our EPIRB if it were activated. Coast Guard Camslant Chesapeake was wonderful. It was Bill Hallstein's first experience on the distressed-vessel side of communications; in his earlier days, he had served as a Coast Guard officer. Benjamin Franklin was assigned two dedicated single-sideband frequencies not available to commercial traffic, which allowed the radio monitoring process to be efficient and clear, with minimal electrical consumption wasted by weeding through other radio traffic.
We set up a radio schedule every 30 minutes until Bill Hallstein extended that to every hour, then every two hours, and eventually to a four-hour schedule for the remaining two days to Bermuda. Coast Guard Camslant Chesapeake was supportive, professional, cheerful and, most importantly, responsive to Benjamin Franklin's requests. Bill Hallstein scheduled radio call intervals according to his assessment of the rate of flooding, weather conditions (wind direction, sea height, barometric pressure trends) and assessment of our rate of progress (speed and direction) toward Bermuda.
Bercaw artfully sailed Benjamin Franklin to minimize rudder use and ease the strain on the skeg, while Butcher cut and fitted shoring between longitudinals to hold the underwater epoxy in place, stemming the flow from the leak. Trevor Hallstein quietly and efficiently organized our abandon-ship supplies, consisting of food, water, life raft, exposure suits, and communication and navigation equipment (VHF, Iridium phone and hand-held GPS in a dedicated watertight Pelican case). All gear was attached together to form a highly visible rosette. The seas were too big to consider stepping directly to the raft; we knew we would have to swim. We had no plans to leave Benjamin Franklin unless Benjamin Franklin left us first. We extended the length of our harness tethers to allow us to keep working while remaining attached to the rosette. It was a good exercise and fortunately not needed, although there is always a streak of curiosity about practicing the complete scenario.
Butcher reduced water flow to a rate manageable with either pump. Benjamin Franklin was equipped with two permanent manual bilge pumps, the hard-plumbed Edson 1 gallon per stroke and the smaller Henderson, the Lavac head pump that Morgan Simmons engineered with a valve diversion for bilge suction. In preparation for the trip, we chose not to place our wellbeing in the hands of electrical devices other than the communication equipment. While Butcher was in the bilge working and Bill Hallstein was on the radio, Bercaw and Trevor Hallstein continued to fly the boat on the isobar around Hurricane Karen, steering as little as possible to reduce lateral stress on the skeg.
Meanwhile, northbound Karen was wreaking destruction in Bermuda and leaving us behind. After 48 hours, our wind quit, and our seas lay down. The calm water allowed Butcher, Bercaw and Trevor Hallstein to dive and inspect the hull.
Now began the long trip of motoring to Bermuda, with the added tension created by an approaching cold front promising strong northerly winds and seas. We needed calm water and no wind to reach Bermuda successfully. The window of opportunity was small; northerly winds began blowing 30 minutes after we secured alongside in Bermuda. We had considered the alternative destination of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., approximately 850 nm to the southwest. The Coast Guard advised of deteriorating weather approaching Florida's coast, and with our slow rate of travel, we chose the tight but favorable weather window north to Bermuda. While motoring along, we were invited to a birthday party for Butcher, for which he had stowed aboard all the required items, with his customary wisdom.
We reduced our communications with the Coast Guard to brief position reports at four-hour intervals. When communications were transferred to Danny Little at Bermuda Harbor Radio 90 miles south of the island, he said, "Benjamin Franklin, let me first tell you where you are." With that, he provided our position with more decimal-point accuracy than our GPS! When Bill Hallstein suggested contacting and releasing Camslant Chesapeake, Little said, "I would like to do that for you. I think you have your hands full."
That was the beginning of generous hospitality in Bermuda. Alan Burland, whose son Travis had been a student of Bercaw's on Westward a few months before, kindly arranged for Benjamin Franklin to be hauled at St. George's Boatyard, operated by Craig Faries. Alan and Ian Hind monitored the repair process from beginning to end, including bolstering the occasional sagging spirits of the crew. Stephen Page from Bean Engineering welded with superb skill and the eye of an artist. He was enormously concerned that everything be "completely right" so that "you go back to sea safely."
With repairs completed, Bill Hallstein came home in December. In May of 2002, he and his sons, Eric and Trevor Hallstein, and Simmons sailed home from Bermuda in conditions not unlike the southbound trip. Immediately north of the Gulf Stream, a cold front raged from the northwest &mdash the direction of home. We hove to for two days of good reading by the wood stove and then resumed our passage, gaining 30 miles in the "right" direction while waiting for the storm to pass.
The originally planned voyage became a successful sea trial; we leaned on the boat, found problems and fixed them. Bercaw journeyed to Pitcairn via steamer from New Zealand. He enjoyed a highly successful reunion with Pitcairners, while the crew of Benjamin Franklin looked forward to his stories.
Bill Hallstein is a physician and USCG-licensed 1,600-ton ocean master who sails as captain with the Sea Education Association of Woods Hole. Sean Bercaw has logged more than 150,000 miles at sea, ranging on vessels from small sailboats to nuclear submarines to 300-foot-tall ships. Between voyages with SEA as captain on SSV Westward, SSV Corwith Cramer and SSV Robert C. Seamans, Bercaw runs marathons, rows competitively and has built his house on Cape Cod.
