To live or die by the benevolence of your fellow man

Late in the summer of '09, Lisette and myself were headed across the fjord to Horten in a brand new Bella 7000 Sunmar. It was on loan from the shop for extended testing, and we figured the 40 minute cruise there and back would fit nicely into the testing regimen, especially with a dinner thrown in. The wind had been blowing 7-9 m/s from the SSE all day and was now freshening. I imagined the big green rollers coming up the fjord would be the perfect test of the Sunmar’s sea keeping abilities, of which I’d heard quite a bit. My boss had come in previously from a test drive with the buyer, who despite being anguished by the mechanical issues plaguing the boat, had been highly impressed.

Because this was one of the few sunny days of 2009, people were out in force despite the wind. As we entered the canal in Moss, I noticed the waves crashing into the south inlet. They were much bigger than I expected, and sloshed right through to the north side. I glanced anxiously over at Lisette, who was at the helm. I had subjected her to a few bad experiences in bad weather, and I didn’t want this to be another one. I hung on as we hit the first big wave. The brave little Sunmar climbed right up over it, tipped, and smashed hard into the second wave, lifting a huge sheet of green water that momentarily overwhelmed the windscreen wipers. The boat shuddered from the impact, but there were no nasty cracks or groans, and no water entered the wheelhouse. To my relief, Lisette was grinning. ”She sure does take a beating” she said ”but it feels completely safe!”

We were coming around the southern end of Jeløy island, and I was occupied with the plotter when Lisette pointed: ”I think that guy needs some help.” I followed the line of her finger, and my blood ran cold. Deep into the Alby bay there was a man in a loud orange dry suit, standing up in a tiny boat and wawing his arms back and forth across his head in distress. He was well past the point where the incoming waves had started feeling the bottom, rising tall, steep and ugly with a head of white froth, and his little craft was tipping precariously. ”Give me the controls,” I said ”then go aft and secure the longest line we’ve got on the port side.” I swung around and headed straight for him.

The ride in was nerve-racking. I’d taken the outside helm, leaning in to glance at the depth sounder every now and then. My worst fear was to strike the bottom in a trough and get rolled over and swamped. At that point we’d have been beyond all help, ground to dust in the vast sheet of dirty foam that swirled in the tidal zone. As we approached I could see that it was a 4m dinghy with its engine idling, dangerously overloaded with diving equipment and one visibly shaken occupant. I went as close as I dared, turned around him so that he would drift across our stern, and yelled to Lisette ”Now!” She threw the line, and the man caught it on the first try. He then spent what seemed like an eternity trying to attach our line to his own painter, working with fingers useless from cold. When he finally was made fast, I helped haul him close. He was a big, fit man and it took all our strength to help him aboard. He instantly collapsed in a heap on the bench.

At first he hardly said anything at all. He just sat there, staring back at his dinghy. I tried to invite him inside, but he declined, so I shrugged and joined Lisette in the wheelhouse. We were rounding the last buoy south of Jeløya and headed for the canal with the sea behind us, when he finally came inside. He showed me how he was unable to close the zipper on his dry suit. He described how the stricken outboard had lacked the power to conquer the wind. He explained that his dry suit was useless if it wasn't water tight, and how he couldn't close the zipper by himself. He profusely expressed his gratitude for our assistance. He tried to be nonchalant about it, but the fear left from his harrowing ordeal showed through when he told me yet again about how he’d tried and tried, but found himself unable to close the zipper at the back of his dry suit. I shuddered. Getting lost in the surf while wearing a functioning dry suit might just have been survivable. Weighed down by a waterlogged dry suit, he wouldn’t even have had a fighting chance against the breakers.

"It’s your own fault" I told him. "A boat like that, on a day like this, that close inshore? You were asking for it! You put yourself in a position where a mechanical failure would leave you with precious little time left if nobody happened to be nearby. I had to take the same risk to help you, and with my wife here, I didn’t do that lightly." "Oh no, I didn’t go close inshore at all." " Then where were you when you had your mechanical problem?" "Out there." He was pointing towards Horten. I shook my head. It didn’t add up. "How long ago?" He shrugged. "Maybe two, three hours." "What?!" My jaw dropped and Lisette looked over, incredulous. "But you drifted right across the fjord, and there’s plenty of boats out today, so why didn't anybody see you?" He shook his head and offered up a sad smile. "Oh, they all saw me. But some of them pretended not to notice, and the rest waved back like they didn’t understand that I was in trouble."

I shook my head in disgust. Nobody could have misunderstood the situation. I simply don’t believe somebody that stupid could operate a boat. The only explanation is that they all just chose to carry on, for all their private reasons. Maybe they didn’t want a large and visibly Turkish man in their boat. Maybe they appeased themselves by looking at all the others carrying right on by with them. Maybe they all thought ”Surely someone will help him before it really gets dangerous”. But nobody did, even for so long after it became dangerous that it got almost impossible. If I’d come along only a few minutes later, he would have been so far into the surf that I wouldn’t have risked our lives in order to save him.

So where does that leave me? In a cold, lasting fury is where. What if I’m out on a bad day among "fellow" boaters, and I suffer a mechanical failure? And what if I’m unkempt enough to make the nice people in the nice boats think that maybe I smell bad? Well, experience now tells me I’ll get smeared on the rocks. Maybe it's useful to know that, but at the time of this writing, I still wish I didn't.