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Sam Goodchild and Conrad Colman - Source: Global Ocean Race
A Kiwi skipper saved his British teammate from the cold waters off the South Island coast, after he fell overboard in the final stages of the Global Ocean Race.
The youngest team in the competition - Wellington's Conrad Colman and co-skipper Sam Goodchild - won the second leg of the race on December 30 after 30 days and 22 hours of often gruelling sailing.
But before crossing the finish line in Wellington, their 12,070km journey from Cape Town was disrupted when a wave threw Goodchild overboard without a lifejacket, the Global Ocean Race website reported.
Colman, 28, said the experience made him think of his father who died in a boating accident when he was 11 months old. He was not wearing the appropriate safety equipment.
"That came rushing back," he said. "I made a very conscious promise that I wasn't going to let Sam be alone out there."
Visibility 'pretty shocking'
Colman and Goodchild, 22, had only met three days before the start of the race.
They had been leading for 20 days as they crossed the Tasman Sea, and with a 90-km gap between them and second place the weather began to change.
The pair began fighting headwinds as they rounded Cape Farewell at the northern tip of the South Island.
Goodchild was cooking food, while Colman was on watch at the helm as three to five-metre swells and winds of around 26-33 knots rocked the boat.
Coleman said with fog and rain, the visibility was "pretty shocking".
"The wind went very quickly from 10 to then 26 then 30 (knots) so we had one reef in the main and it was clearly time to change from the Solent to staysail."
Goodchild left his remaining food and prepared for the sail change. He put on his jacket and went up on the foredeck to drop the jib.
"I was a bit over-confident and, in retrospect, crazy not clipping on or wearing my lifejacket, but it was a job that had to be done quickly," he said.
With Coleman in the cockpit and Goodchild on the foredeck, both spotted a significant wave coming towards them.
As it hit the boat, Goodchild was quickly flung over the guardrails.
"I tried to hang on, but it threw me out the side and I landed on the jib and made a few attempts to grab stuff, but nothing successful [sic]."
Colman did not have a clear view of the foredeck as a "big wall of spray came over the bow".
"I thought Sam had ducked down as it obscured him completely from view," he said.
"Then I looked down to leeward of the boat and there was Sam with this look of amazement on his face."
He immediately tried to slow the Class40 down.
"Then I ran and picked up the heaving line, which thankfully, I knew exactly where it was and how to use it," Colman said.
"I threw it to him and it landed a metre away and as he reached for it, the boat lurched and pulled it out of his reach."
Staying calm
Goodchild said he didn't panic as he knew instinctively to conserve energy.
"I tried to get the line when it was close, but it wasn't going to happen," he said.
"So I tried to keep an eye on the boat and save energy."
Colman ran to punch the man over board (MOB) button, and began sailing away from his teammate.
As Goodchild had been in mid-sail change when he was washed overboard, so there was no windward sheet on either of the headsails.
"So, to tack and come back and get me, Conrad had to re-reeve the sheet, so it took him about ten minutes to tack," Goodchild said.
"At first, I thought it was fine and he'd just turn around and pick me up. But it slowly started dawning on me as ten minutes passed that he hadn't tacked yet and I couldn't see him and he certainly couldn't see me."
Goodchild, who was wearing boots and mid-layer thermals, began to prepare for a long period in the water.
"Waves began breaking over my head and started pulling me down, so, slowly but surely, I started taking them off; mid-layers, smock, everything down to my thermal top."
He cut the hood off his bright yellow smock to have something to wave and ditched everything else, he said.
With Cessna Citation back under control, Colman manoeuvred the boat and constantly checked for his teammate.
"Having to short tack and gybe while keeping an eye on the chartplotter to see where he was and calculate the drift to where he might be while I knew I had a very, very tight window of opportunity was hard work - it felt like I needed to be seven places at once!" Colman said.
He eventually saw a flash of yellow and threw a dan-buoy towards Goodchild.
By that stage, the British skipper had been in the water for about 25 minutes. He was "getting pretty tired" and "struggling to swim".
'Happiest moment of our lives'
Goodchild eventually made it back on board after being pulled by rope.
"I think it was the happiest moments of our lives," Colman said.
Just over 24 hours later, the pair were the first to complete the race, 36 hours ahead of their closest competitors. They also set a new world record after covering 578km in 24 hours.
"It's the legend of the young-uns," Colman laughed at the time.
While a grinning Goodchild said: The Indian Ocean isn't the problem, it's Cook Strait that's the issue. The last 12 hours have been pretty horrific."
The Global Ocean Race goes all around the world and is in five legs, starting in Majorca and ending in France.
The third leg, from Wellington to Punta del Este, Uruguay, will start on January 29.
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