2012. Saved in the Atlantic. An exemplary story

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Saved in the Atlantic

Taken from the 2012 Journal of Sailing, Year 38, No. 03, April, pp. 100-103.

Solidarity among sailors exists, even today. That’s what happened when a boat (Sun Fast 3200) is sinking in the middle of the ocean after hitting an unidentified floating object. Rescue arrives from a Bavaria 36 that loads the crew aboard, and the tragedy has a happy ending.

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What happens if you are sinking in the middle of the ocean and have to abandon the boat? Simple, you board a Bavaria 36. A story of solidarity among sailors.

Two longtime friends and for fifteen years double racing companions had to bow to the infamous fate that abruptly awakened them from the beautiful dream they were living. Isidoro Santececca and Francesco Piva were forced to abandon in the Atlantic the boat (a Jeanneau Sun Fast 3200) with which they were participating in the second leg of the Transquadra (on the 2600-mile route from the island of Madeira to Martinique). After hitting an object at sea in the middle of the night, the right rudder ripped through the bottom of the hull. Unfortunately, the shaft did not break and even raised the shroud on deck. With one rudder destroyed, but with the blade hanging on like a shred, the boat (which also started taking on water) became absolutely unmanageable, forcing the two sailors to call for help. They were thus joined by a pair of French competitors, who got them onto the Bavaria 36 with which they were tackling the race, and all four of them together reached the finish line, happily completing a fine adventure of authentic seamanship.

How the adventure began

Isidoro Santececca, 54, owner of the historic Trattoria da Marcello in Rome’s San Lorenzo district, and Francesco Piva, a 44-year-old entrepreneur, also from Rome, sailed their first regatta in doubles in the 1990s in the Rome for Two. Then, still in pairs on production boats, they participated in several rounds of Corsica and Sardinia, the Carthago Dilecta Est and also won the first edition of the “for Two” category of the Middle Sea Race with theX452 Durlindana. With the same boat they completed a transfer from the Virgin Islands to the Azores. In April 2011, they crossed the Atlantic again, from Fort Lauderdale (in Florida, U.S.) to Horta (Azores), to qualify themselves and Piva’s boat, the Kiwi 40 FC Peraspera, with the idea of perhaps participating in the next edition of the round-the-world Global Ocean Race (for double crews aboard Class 40s). “After many regattas in the Mediterranean and two Atlantic crossings by transfer, we felt the desire to participate in a double ocean race, which would mark the closure of a fifteen-year journey and, probably, open a new experience, which could be the round-the-world race,” says Isidoro Santececca. For two experienced sailors, but who do anything else in life, the Transquadra is the perfect ocean race, because it is reserved for non-professional skippers of at least 40 years of age, who can decide to sail solo or in doubles, but still always with standard boats. Also, in this year’s seventh edition, participants were allowed for the first time to reach the Madeira archipelago (where the transatlantic race starts) from Saint Nazaire (France) or Barcelona (Spain). Last summer, Santececca and Piva then participated in the first leg, from Barcelona to Porto Santo (Madeira), with the Sun Fast 3200 purchased in 2009 specifically for this regatta and christened the Cymba (Barca, in Latin). When, on January 28, together with a fleet of nearly one hundred boats (including, among others, the Sun Fast 3200 Mima of Andrea Gancia and Massimo Rufini and Splinter of Nino Merola and Andrea Caracci) they set off for Martinique: added to the regattas and training in the Mediterranean and the first leg of the la Transquadra, they already boasted about 10,000 miles of sailing with Cymba.

First the “boom,” then the “crash”

By the fifth day of the crossing, Santececca and Piva were happy and in great shape. “The race was going really well, we were in a great position and the conditions were ideal, with aft winds between 15 and 20 knots that had allowed us to establish remarkable daily averages, between 150 and 190 miles, and reach top speeds of almost 17 knots, on planing,” Santececca says. A dream crossing that, however, came to an abrupt end between 2 and 3 a.m. on Feb. 2, in the middle of the night, when it was dark because there was not even a moon. “I had finished my rest shift and had been at the helm for a few minutes. I was holding a speed of 10 knots, with the 30-square-meter mainsail and 80-square-meter spi on shore. Just enough time to hear a ‘boom,’ on the bottom of the hull, that soon after my ears were deafened by a frightening ‘crash,'” Santececca recalls. It was that sound, combined with the smell of polyester diffused in the air, that made the pair of sailors immediately realize the severity of the damage. “Those who sail, the dull thuds of objects touching the hull are used to it; but when you hear a bang like ours, you immediately realize that, at the very least, the race is over at that moment.” So Santececca and Piva ‘s first feeling was one of disappointment; in one “crash” they saw a three-year project go up in smoke. Immediately afterward, however, they took action to verify the extent of the damage, which, speaking later with the boat’s designer, was definitely caused by a very hard object, thus ruling out the possibility of a whale. “The rapid sequence of the bang and the dynamics of the crash, indicate to us that the object was hit with the rudder which, not breaking, then went over the object from which it received a strong push from the bottom upwards. At that point, the blade entered the hull and the axle caused the shad on deck to explode by compression,” explains Santececca, who adds, “The Jeanneau engineers told us that we were also lucky: if at that speed the object so hard we had hit it with the keel, we would have lost it and capsized.”

The “Breton-style” rescue

With the bottom of the boat open by a rift of more than a meter that was letting in water and with the blade stuck in the hull, which could not be disassembled or removed because of its excessively strong shaft, and thus preventing the crew from steering with the other working rudder, which meanwhile had been misaligned from the broken one, Santececca and Piva after several hours had to make the decision to abandon the boat. “With sadness in our hearts, we had to consider the priority, which was the preservation of our lives. The decision was made unanimously.” Immediately after the accident, the pair of Cymba had alerted the Race Committee, which, in addition to contacting the Italian Port Authority (also alerted by the Epirb signal) and the U.S. Coast Guard, had asked competitors sailing in the same area as Santececca and Piva to head for the drifting boat. The first to be heard (first on the satellite phone, then on vhf) were Frenchmen Daniel Prévot and René Le Cunff, racing on the Bavaria 36 Vagdespoir, who a few hours later (about seven hours from the time of the accident) arrived at the spot. “Along with them came two other solo competitors,” Santececca says. “Despite the disappointment of what was happening, at that moment I felt a great emotion to see these three sails coming towards us at the same time. It was very nice to see that the man of the sea has values above all else: those people had diverted their course, momentarily abandoning the regatta, to come and help us.”

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The birth of a great friendship

Isidoro Santececca and Francesco Pica thus boarded the Vagdespoir of Prévot and Le Cunff, with whom they arrived in Martinique after thirteen days of sailing. “Fortunately, the French couple were an uncompetitive and very cruise-minded crew. After a first day spent with some understandable cohabitation problems, we got to know each other and had a great time. They had a galley for two crossings. We cooked them nice pastas, then ended up taking turns with them, helming and adjusting sails. I must say that in the misfortune we were lucky not to be picked up by a ship that would have taken us who knows where. In this way we still reached the finish line of the regatta on a boat of competitors who, today, are our friends as if we had known them for 30 years.”. All’s well that ends well.

by Andrea Falcon

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