FASTNET 1979: THE RACE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
‘A soul-chilling surge of fear swept through all of us as we heard the terrifying sound of a breaking wave 40ft above us. In a few seconds the 10ft-high foaming crest was bearing down on us from behind like an avalanche. […] We braced ourselves for the pooping of our lives, but a split second before the onslaught from astern, the bow disappeared as we nosedived into a wall of water in front. […] As the bow submarined into this secondary wave, Grimalkin’s stern rose until it arced over the bow and stood us on our nose. As we approached the vertical, crew were thrown against the back of the coachroof or out of the boat altogether. A split second later and we were hit from astern by the breaking wave and we pitchpoled.’
This is one of the defining moments of the 1979 Fastnet Race when, after having been knocked down multiple times and rolled through 360°, the 30ft Grimalkin was hit by a rogue wave and pitchpoled.
As she went through the roll, her rig collapsed and she remerged with a broken mast and the spars smashing against her topsides. By then, the boat’s owner, David Sheahan, was dead, floating face down in the sea to windward, and two of the crew were slumped in the cockpit, also apparently dead. Faced with this carnage, the remaining three crew – including the owner’s son, Matt Sheahan, then only 17, who wrote the passage above – decided to abandon ship and boarded the liferaft. Only later did they discover that at least one of the crew left on.
