“Tommy, this is no joke,” Rick Rodriguez messaged to his friend and fellow skipper Tommy Joyce. “We hit a whale and the ship went down. We are in the liferaft.” In March this year American sailor Rodriguez and three friends - his girlfriend Alana Litz, together with Bianca Brateanu and Simon Fischer - were in the midst of the voyage of a lifetime, cruising the Pacific on Rodriguez’s lovingly restored 1976 Kelly Peterson 44, Raindancer. The crew had enjoyed exploring the Galapagos, and were heading to the Marquesas in French Polynesia – something Rodriguez had been dreaming of for decades.
The SV Raindancer crew ran a small YouTube channel. Shortly before setting off on their long Pacific passage, Fischer posted a video titled The Purpose of Life musing on their forthcoming adventure. It ended with a quote from James Thurber: “To see the world, things dangerous to come to…. That is the purpose of life.”
It proved unknowingly apt. never made it to the Marquesas: 1,200 miles from French Polynesia the yacht suddenly hit a whale, and within minutes began taking on water. The crew hurriedly abandoned ship in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean. Their story became a news sensation, and before they’d even made it safely ashore the foursome were featured on news channels around the world. But while their situation was dramatic, it was the crew’s quick thinking, and a combination of traditional seamanship in an emergency, together with the smart use
