During an emergency at sea, just being there to offer support can make all the difference, learned Planet Nine’s captain during a memorable crossing.
The weather wasn’t ideal as Planet Nine set out to cross the Atlantic, but it wasn’t anything that the 240-foot expedition yacht couldn’t handle. Other boats, though, didn’t fare as well. Before Planet Nine made it to the Caribbean, her captain and crew would be called upon to assist in not one, but two emergencies.
It was November 2022, 600 nautical miles out from Cape Verde, when Captain Philip Atkinson received a WhatsApp message from MRCC Azores. A 69-foot sailing yacht 40 nautical miles away needed immediate assistance. A crash jibe caused the boom to swing with such force that it ripped out a deck fitting; this became a projectile missile that took out a chunk of a crew member’s ankle, leaving the bone fractured and exposed. Another crew member was knocked unconscious by the boom.
In an ideal scenario, the injured crew would have been transferred to the more stable, much faster Planet Nine, which would head back to Cape Verde. The sea is not so obliging though.
With damaged rigging and facing 13-foot swell and 30-knot gusts, the sailboat crew could not drop the mainsail, making a patient transfer impossible. The only solution was to head northwest in search of a weather window. For five days, they traveled 800 nautical miles in tandem, with every squall threatening to capsize the over-canvassed sailing yacht, and a crew member in danger of losing her foot. Fortunately, during this time, the other crew member recovered enough that they didn’t need to be evacuated.
Given they had days to prepare for the transfer, this wasn’t your normal emergency, Atkinson points out. Planet Nine’s crew spent those days brainstorming how to do it and drilling for patient recovery. “We ran through all our MOB scenarios and actually set up the equipment. How can we recover someone in these weather conditions? What are the options? Which ones tick a box in the SMS, and which options could really work?”
When the time finally came, the prep paid off and it went smoothly. Every crew member was involved, with no fewer than eight holding lines to prevent swinging as they dropped the 33-foot owner’s tender from the aft deck and recovered it with the patient on board.
One of Atkinson’s takeaways after the fact was recognizing how difficult it can be as captain to stand back and let others be hands-on. “I found it hard to be on the wing station, watching the tender being launched and recovering the patient. But most of the time the captain needs the bird’s-eye view to assess the full situation rather than focusing on smaller details. You need to trust the crew, and if you can’t, you’ve failed as a captain. That’s where realistic drills, training and SOPs become so important.”
Looking back, the one thing Atkinson says he would have done differently is call more often on the radio. “We could see squalls on the radar better than they could, so we called them to give advance warning, enabling them to prepare as best they could, and I called at the start of my watches to check in. I didn’t realize the comfort they took from hearing my voice. It was only afterwards that I knew how much it meant. I didn’t appreciate how concerned they were about capsizing, which is why just being there helped them so much.”
“You need to trust the crew, and if you can’t, you’ve failed as a captain.”
Both boats used MSOS shoreside medical support, so Planet Nine was able to get medical information before the injured crew was on board. “This was great because we knew what to expect and it enabled us to prepare for handling the patient and continuing treatment. With the internet so good these days, the doctors were able to do a video examination by guiding me. They could then adjust antibiotics, pain medication, etc.” Atkinson says.
Fifty miles from Martinque, a medevac team extracted the crew member by helicopter. Then, 12 hours later, Planet Nine was again called by MRCC to assist a sinking catamaran. And again, the weather didn’t cooperate. “All we could do was stand by and keep the searchlight on it until the helicopter could winch them off,” Atkinson says.
Yet by this time, his crew was a well-honed emergency-responding machine. “We were so used to drills and thinking about different scenarios that even though it was different, everyone fell into action immediately: lookouts posted, tenders prepped, recovery gear ready, etc. It might have been different had we been able to go through with the rescue, but I felt we were ready.”
Captain Atkinson also took away one big lesson. “Never underestimate the power of the strength, hope and peace of mind you can provide to people with something as basic as the willingness to help,” he says. “To tell someone, ‘It’s OK, I’m here for you’ can make all the difference.”