Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy (30 page)

Dan was hoisted above the wave tops and air-taxied toward the raft. He looked down and was startled to see the raft’s orange canopy. Somehow the survivors had righted the raft, or perhaps a wave had flipped it back over. Dan could only hope the survivors were inside.

Once in the water, Dan felt a surge of relief: two heads poked out of the raft’s doorway. The rescue swimmer fought his way closer, and without any coaxing one of the survivors slid into the water and Dan started towing him away from the raft to await the lowering of the basket. The two men were slammed by a wave, and Dan ingested considerable seawater during their tumble. When he popped to the surface, he still had the survivor in his grip, but now Dan was vomiting, willing himself to hang on to the survivor as the seas tried to tug him away.

•  •  •  

Jenny watched Dan put this survivor in the basket, and when he entered the helicopter, she thought,
Why are they so slow? Don’t they know we’re running out of time?

The copilot didn’t know it, but this survivor had one of his arms outside the basket as it approached the doorway, and Neil had to lean out and smack the person’s arm back inside. (An arm or even a hand outside the basket can be broken in multiple places if it gets trapped between the aircraft and the steel basket.) The survivor may have been gun-shy about leaving the basket once in the aircraft after the slap. Neil didn’t waste time and yanked him out, unclipped the basket, and put the hook down for Dan, who had drifted far from the raft.

Dan clipped the cable to his harness, and as he was being lifted from a trough, he swung forward ten feet, directly into the face of a big wave coming from a different angle from the others. He slammed into the liquid wall, and spray from the impact shot high in the sky before the swimmer emerged on the other side of the wave.

Steve, worried about both fuel and the swimmer, said, “I hope I’m not swinging him too much. Just hold him below the aircraft and we will reposition him by the raft.”

“Roger,” answered Neil. “I’m going to bring him halfway up.”

Dan careened wildly below the aircraft, and Neil, hanging on to the cable with his left arm, almost got yanked out the door.

Once the helicopter was near the raft, Neil set Dan down into the water and watched him unclip and begin methodically stroking. The flight mechanic wondered just how much strength Dan had left:
You can do it. Just one more left.

Steve was thinking the same thing, and as if to will his swimmer more power, he blurted out, “Come on, Dan, reach that raft!”

An agonizingly slow minute went by, where it looked as if the current was getting the best of their swimmer. Then Steve spoke again, this time with relief: “Dan has the towline!”

The swimmer pulled himself to the raft and helped the last survivor out. As Dan was getting the final sailor inside the basket, the two were pushed by a wave from the right to the left side of the helicopter.

Neil’s heart skipped a beat, and he craned his neck out the door to search underneath the helo for the two men. As soon as he saw that the survivor was in the basket, he retracted cable as fast as he could.

“This one is swinging really bad,” said Neil.

Steve didn’t respond, but instead kept his focus on holding the helicopter as still as possible. He felt the seconds tick by.
We’ve got to get this guy in, and then get the swimmer in, within five minutes or we’re going to be up against our bingo.

Jenny felt the same tension, and when the survivor was at the door, she looked over her shoulder and saw Neil yank him in. “When the last survivor was pulled inside,” she later recalled, “I got really mad. Instead of getting out of the basket immediately, he put his hands up and cheered. I remember wanting to hit him upside the head and shout,
‘Get out of the damn basket!’
I know they had just been in the worst situation of their lives and I should have been more forgiving, but getting Dan back in the helo and getting home safely depended on our fuel, and time is fuel.”

With the last
Bounty
sailor out of the raft, the exhausted rescue swimmer slashed the raft with his knife and was lifted back to the helicopter. After he got his breath back, Dan, along with Neil, grilled the survivors about the exact number of people on the ship. Earlier reports had said sixteen or seventeen, and the survivors confirmed the correct number was sixteen. The first helicopter had extracted five, and this helo had nine jammed in the cabin, so two were still missing.

The three survivors who were picked up last were able to tell the others about the four shipmates taken from their raft by the first helicopter. So the group now knew that everyone was accounted for except Claudene Christian, Captain Walbridge, and Chief Mate Svendsen. But they also knew that the first helicopter had plucked out of the sea one sailor drifting alone—they just didn’t know that person was John Svendsen. The bottom line was that two of their shipmates were still in the ocean.

Commander Bonn and Jenny knew they were almost at bingo, but because they always planned for a small cushion of fuel, they decided to do one last loop around the search area, hoping to spot a survivor. All they found was more debris. Steve made sure the crew went through its final checklist to ensure everything not needed was turned off, then he punched in the coordinates for Elizabeth City and turned over the controls to Jenny.

While Jenny was flying the aircraft, Steve used the aircraft’s computer to predict fuel burn rate and fuel on deck when they landed at Elizabeth City. He updated the systems with the current headwinds, and the system flashed
BINGO FUEL
, meaning they would not be landing with as much of a cushion as they thought. In fact, should the headwinds increase, they might be in an emergency situation of their own.

Jenny’s heart sank and her stomach felt as if there were a boulder in it.
What have I done?
she thought.
I failed everyone. This is my fault if the headwinds are worse than expected and we have to ditch.

Steve read her mind and reassured her they would still be fine. To be on the safe side, though, he did another calculation using their current speed, and the cushion improved a bit. Both pilots knew they’d be cutting it close and would have to fly in an exact straight line; they could not let the winds push them even a few feet off course.

As the pilots discussed fuel and contingency landing plans, the survivors settled in for what was anticipated to be a two-hour, turbulent flight back to land. One by one the sailors began to fall asleep.

One survivor couldn’t get the images of Claudene, Robin, and John Svendsen out of his thoughts. Two of those three people were at the mercy of the seas. He crawled closer to Neil and asked, “Are there any ships going for the last two people? We can’t just leave them out there. I don’t even want to think about the possibility that they didn’t make it.”

Neil tried to console the man. “We are very good at what we do. We will find your friends. A third helicopter is coming out.”

Speaking into his headset, Neil said to Commander Bonn, “If you see the other helicopter approaching, let me know right away. One of the survivors is really upset, and I want to point the other aircraft out to him.”

“Roger,” said Steve, “I understand. And let him know the C-130 is still out there searching.”

A short time later, Steve told Neil that the third helicopter would be coming by on the right side of the aircraft.

Neil tapped the survivor on the shoulder and positioned him at the window. A minute later the other helicopter went by. The survivor watched it go, heading into the teeth of Sandy.

•  •  •  

On that third helicopter, flown by pilots Brian Bailey and Nick Hazlett, flight mechanic Tim Kuklewski was awestruck by the sight of
Bounty
. “When we arrived at the
Bounty
,” he recalled, “I was surprised how big it was. Each time a wave crashed on it, various items would come loose, ranging from wooden planks to life jackets. It was an incredible scene, and it looked like the ship would be swallowed by the waves at any moment. I took my iPhone out, aimed it out the doorway, and snapped off three quick shots.”

Tim and his crew saw how the debris field stretched for miles. With the C-130 guiding them, they hovered as low as possible over promising survival suits. Some suits were quickly identified as empty because they were folded over or were clearly flat, but others were filled with a combination of air and water, making it look as if a person were inside. Pilots Bailey and Hazlett kept approaching these suits from all different angles.

“Rescue swimmer Tim Bolen and I kept getting our hopes up,” said Tim. “We were hoping to see a face or maybe a hand rise out of the water. We would not fly off until we were one hundred percent sure they were empty.” But time and time again, the suits were unmanned, and after more than an hour of searching, they, too, hit their bingo and headed back to Elizabeth City, where they rested and refueled, preparing to head back out later that day.

A fourth helicopter was launched at noon and resumed the search. Rather than go to the
Bounty
, which had been examined several times, this crew followed the debris field a full two miles out from the ship. The crew, consisting of pilots Matt Herring and Kristen Jaekel, flight mechanic Ryan Parker, and swimmer Casey Hanchette, scanned the storm-tossed seas below them, hoping for some sign of life. After completing the first search pattern and coming up empty, they began their second search. Ryan noticed how one Gumby suit floated differently from the others. “It was more spread out than the others suits we investigated, so we came back around and got in a low hover. Then the hood of the suit flopped open and we could see blond hair.”

Rescue swimmer Casey Hanchette was immediately lowered, and once in the water he unhooked and swam toward the unconscious sailor, who was floating facedown. The sailor was Claudene Christian. Casey immediately got her in the sling and clipped his harness back on the hook, and they were lifted up to the helicopter together. He and Ryan administered CPR the entire hour-and-a-half ride back to the air station. But their nonstop efforts were for naught. Claudene was dead.

Claudene had a laceration on her nose, but showed no other signs of trauma. We will never know if she survived for a time in the water or if she was pulled down by the rigging and died quickly.

After an incredible rescue of fourteen people by the coast guard, one
Bounty
crew member had been taken by the hurricane and Captain Walbridge was still missing, and the odds of his being found alive were shrinking with each passing hour.

When the survivors touched down at Elizabeth City, they were swarmed by people trying to help: police, paramedics, other coast guard staff, and the Red Cross. Those sailors still in survival suits needed help exiting the helicopters because of all the water inside their suits. They could barely take a step, and the rescue swimmers and flight mechanics asked the survivors to sit on the edge of the helicopter doorway while slits were cut in the feet of the Gumby suits to let the water drain out.

Once off the aircraft and inside the station, everyone was interviewed by coast guard officials. Claudene and Captain Walbridge had not yet been found, and the search-and-rescue teams were desperate to find out anything that would help in their efforts.

Adam Prokosh was treated at a hospital for his separated shoulder and the fractured vertebra in his back, then he was reunited with the rest of the survivors at a hotel, where he shared a room with Josh. A couple hours later they learned that Claudene had been found but was unresponsive. Some thought that meant that she was alive, but a short time later word came back that Claudene had died. “Right after we found out,” said Josh, “the Red Cross came to the hotel and we boarded cabs to go to Walmart to get some clothes. Everyone was crying because we had just learned Claudene didn’t make it.”

Claudene’s parents, Dina and Rex, had been worried about their daughter since
Bounty
first set sail from New London, and their anxiety only increased when Claudene called them at the beginning of the voyage to tell them how much she loved them. Their concern mounted when they later received the text message from Claudene that said, “If I go down with the ship and the worst happens, just know that I AM TRULY, GENUINELY HAPPY. And I’m doing what I love! I love you.”

Days of sickening worry passed, and then came the dreaded phone call from the coast guard when Claudene was first located and lifted into the helicopter. The Christians were told Claudene was unresponsive and being given CPR. Dina and Rex immediately began flying on a series of connecting flights to get to Elizabeth City as fast as possible. While waiting for one of the connecting flights in Atlanta, Dina’s cell phone suddenly rang. It was a doctor at the hospital where Claudene’s body had been taken, and he broke the news that Claudene had died. The Christians were heartbroken but also angry.
How could this have happened, how could an experienced captain set sail when the whole world knew a hurricane was heading in their direction?

As images of the sinking
Bounty
glowed from television sets and computer screens across the United States, the entire country was asking the same question. Part of that answer is held by the sea. After searching twelve thousand overlapping square nautical miles, the coast guard suspended the search for Captain Robin Walbridge. His body was never found.

Three days after
Bounty
’s crew abandoned ship in 77-degree water, the coast guard suspended its search for Robin Walbridge. That same day, coast guard rear admiral Steven Ratti ordered a formal investigation to determine the cause of the sinking.

By then, Thursday, November 1,
Bounty
—a ship that Walbridge once told his crew couldn’t sink because of the buoyancy of its wooden construction—had indeed sunk, leaving only a few bits of debris—unused immersion suits among them—floating on the surface.