Update on Friday evening:
Roz On Dry Land: Safe, Healthy and Ready to Return to Sea
Due to a combination of high seas to 14 feet and 35kt gale force winds, and the loss of her sea anchor, Roz made the decision last night to return to dry land and resume her journey when conditions improve. The United States Coast Guard arrived at the Brocade via helicopter to evacuate Roz at 8:30 p.m. PDT. She arrived safely in California at approximately 10:00 p.m., at which point she underwent a complete medical evaluation, standard procedure for a Coast Guard rescue. After a good meal and a full night's sleep, Roz is in good spirits and has a clean bill of health.
The boat is currently still at sea, with its tracking systems in place, and the team is planning to retrieve it as soon as the weather conditions improve. At that point, Roz looks forward to returning to the San Francisco Bay Area in the next few days and exploring options for retrieving her boat and continuing her adventure under optimal conditions.
On behalf of Roz and her family, her friends and her shore team, we'd like to express our gratitude to the USCG for their assistance. Roz also appreciates the outpouring of well-wishes during the past few days and sends her thanks to everyone for their ongoing support.
Last evening Roz was airlifted off her boat and is now in California. More news will be coming shortly.
Click on the Weather tab above to see the new weather report by Rick Shema. Other weather information is regrettably not up to date as a result of malfunction of a recording device on the boat.
Because of the volume of comments, we've disabled the standard web comments and request that you use the Contact Form to send Roz messages of support. Thank you.
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23 Aug 2007
Thursday August 23rd.
6pm GMT Roz has called me several times today on the satellite phone. She was making good progress without rowing. Following the two capsizes already mentioned on yesterday's blog, she put out Sid the sea-anchor to keep the boat with bows facing the waves so that she would not roll again. During the night it did happen again.
Venturing out onto the deck to find out what Sid was doing, she found only 6 feet of rope attached to nothing. Sid had gone.
She called Rick her weather forecaster to find out what the prospects were, only to learn that MarineTrack had lost track of her. Her GPS was not working either, so she had no idea where she was. After her first phone call to me she tried deploying her drogue - which I gather is something like a big canvas bucket with a hole in it, which if streamed out behind the boat should help to keep it going straight. Since it would be risky to open the rear hatch, we had to discuss options as to how to affix the drogue to the rear of the boat. She went out to try, but did not feel she had been very successful.
By this time, we had called on the researchers at TOPP (Tagging of Pacific Predators) that have supplied the Brocade with 4 redundant satellite tracking devices. Don Kohrs was on the case immediately and got us a precise location for Roz. Shortly after, Roz went out again to retrieve her hand-held GPS from her emergency grab-bag in a hatch out on the deck.
Roz got very cold being out there, and is now lying in her wet sleeping bag, shivering. She had bumped her head during one of the capsizes.
In a later call when she knew the co-ordinates of her position, and I had made a few phone calls to find out the prospects of rescue, we debated whether she wished to be rescued or not. In some ways she felt that she could not continue without a sea anchor and with the damage done to some of her electronics. However, having got that far, and not wanting to give in at the first hurdle, she now says that she wants to stick it out for another 24 hours and see how it goes. There is a sea anchor available which could be taken out by helicopter and dropped for her. MarineTrack is again following her, with updated locations on our tracking page.
It is a real shame that this has happened so early in the voyage - and she really has moved some distance in the last day or so. It sounds like all the ingredients of a nightmare for those of us safely on terra firma. A living nightmare for Roz, she dreads another night of sleepless worry about whether the boat will capsize again. She feels safe, but not at all comfortable. Thank you for all your messages of encouragement and concern for her, and for me. We will keep you informed.
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22 Aug 2007
A couple of days ago there was a report on TV about a badger that had crawled into a washing machine - and survived a washing cycle when it was turned on. In this second Podcast Roz describes what it was like to experience the boat rolling over twice during the night. Sounds like a similar experience. However, she does have great faith her boat's ability to self-right, having been through something similar on the Atlantic Ocean. Until the weather improves this is how she will continue to send her reports.
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22 Aug 2007
From the Podcast - subscribe to the podcast with this URL:
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/roz/XJPC12_rss.xml
Click the Podcast link at right for more information.
[Note: QuickTime is required to listen to the above audio report. Load quicktime free from apple at http://www.apple.com/quicktime]
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