CoBoat Sailing (Mis)Adventure
Part 3: Man Overboard!
CoBoat Sailing (Mis)Adventure is a 4-part series.
Read Part 1: Maldives to Thailand
Read Part 2: Rotten Inside & Out
We were now 10 days into our sail from the Maldives to Thailand. And despite the boat falling apart and most of our food spoiling, we were still in good spirits.
I was particularly happy because I had the only dry cabin on the boat. In fact, most of the crew slept top-side instead of in cabins since the porthole leaks wet the beds.
It wasn’t my original cabin. I was assigned another, but when the Captain saw that mine was bigger, he commandeered it (as I guess Captains are wont to do). My new cabin was on the port side, which turned out to be a stroke of luck.
Salty Dogs
Let me take a moment to properly introduce you to the crew, then I’ll take you on a video tour of the boat.
We have Harry, who was our hero. Literally keeping us afloat. All while singing John Denver tunes. And with a pretty good voice, I might add.
We have The Captain, who was worthless. In fact, he kept berating Harry, which made the rest of the (German-speaking crew) incredibly angry, since we all acknowledged that Harry was saving our bacon.
Also, let me just add that the Captain spent most of the time away from the rest of us, holed up in his cabin watching porn. When he did come out of his lair, he always and forever had his fly down. I’m just saying. This is the man we entrusted our lives to.
The sailing crew, Uwe, Lilo, and Tess, knew things on the boat were bad, but didn’t let it shake them. Instead, they banded together to help us survive. They constantly put in the hard work to make up for the lack of skills of the rest of us. True Champions, working overtime.
The non-sailors, me, Matthias, Heinz, and Vin. There was a pretty deep level of cluelessness in our foursome, but even we knew we were not in good hands. We basically just tried to stay out of the way.
Here’s a peek at our daily life on board the foul CoBoat.
Going Commando
As I mentioned, up to this point, it had mostly been fun & games. But what would happen next shattered the thin veneer of hunky-dory.
Day 11: Today, the crew went swimming. We were all looking to have a bit of fun after the drama of the broken generator a few days before.
The Captain introduced a new form of merriment: barefoot waterskiing behind the boat.
Apparently, you can safely hang on to a towline if the catamaran is sailing below 4 knots. Since the wind was only at 3 knots, some of us (not me – for once I showed some sense) decided to take the plunge.
The first person to try towline skiing was the Captain, who promptly lost his shorts to the pull. Now he was naked. Gross.
Lost skivvies aside, the real problem with the water skiing idea was that we left the sails up. (Actually, let’s just admit this right now—this is not a good idea under any circumstances. I mean, talk about live bait!) 🦈
So while the boat may have been slowly ploughing ahead at only 3 knots, one big gust of wind could turbo-charge the boat forward at 4-5-6 knots, which is exactly what happened.
The second person to try barefoot water skiing was my buddy Matthias. When the wind gust came, he was dragged under the water and had to let go of the rope or drown. The next thing we knew, he was bobbing in the water, waving at us as we sailed away.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Someone hit the Man Overboard bell. Here’s a description by the Royal Yachting Association, emphasis mine:
“Man overboard” is a critical emergency cry indicating a person has fallen from a vessel into the water, requiring immediate rescue. It demands instant action: shouting the alert, marking the location, throwing flotation devices, and initiating recovery maneuvers, as survival rates are low and rely heavily on rapid response.”
Mayhem ensued as the skilled crew rushed to stop the engine, take down the sails, and turn the boat around. Precious minutes ticked by.
The rest of us scrambled to the roof, some with binoculars, to try to keep our eyes on Matthias, but as the boat turned, we lost our line of sight.
For reference, here’s a map of our route. When we lost Matthias, we were somewhere between Sri Lanka and the Bay of Bengal. The water in that part of the ocean can reach depths of 4,000 meters (or more than 13,000 feet—the length of 35 American football fields).
Matthias had been in the water at least 10-12 minutes before the boat started to make the figure 8 recovering maneuvers.
And all of us standing on deck were looking out at sea in the wrong direction. Except for our hero Harry, who was the one to finally—sans binoculars—spied him bobbing in the waves.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
When we eventually hauled Matthias on board, he was cracking jokes about us landing a second fish. Although I’m not sure he fully realized the danger he was in.
And me? I didn’t find his near-death experience funny at all. In fact, I was crying afterwards and shook for days about the close call and senseless shenanigans.
Up until now, our sailing misadventure was harmless and confined to our small crew on the catamaran.
We were soon to have visitors, though. And they had machine guns pointing at us as they boarded our boat.
CoBoat Sailing (Mis)Adventure is a 4-part series.
Read Part 1: Maldives to Thailand
Read Part 2: Rotten Inside & Out
Part 4: Coming next week!
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Christened “Wander Woman” by National Geographic, Erin Michelson has traveled to 135 countries & all 7 continents. She is a professional speaker and author of the Nomad Life™ series of curated trips and travel guides, including the #1-ranked Explore the World with Nomads.
Want to read more about my adventures? Get the book “Adventures of a Nomad: 30 Inspirational Stories.”
Each installment leaves me increasingly speechless. I may stop talking all together in Part 4.
But know this Erin - you were right to be appalled and scared. That activity was reckless and oh so dangerous. It is somewhat miraculous that your crewmate survived.
And real captains are not "wont to do" anything like this joker did - especially not commandeering a cabin to have more room to consume porn. I do hope he is no longer doing charters, he's a danger to all of us out here on the ocean.
Anxiously awaiting Part 4. 😱
And grateful you survived to tell the tale. 💙🙏
Interesting. I sailed across the Indian Ocean in 2018, in the opposite direction and further south. We sailed from Darwin to South Africa and visited islands on the southern route, Christmas Island, Cocos Keeling, Rodrigues, Mauritius, Reunion, and Madagascar. We also did some drag behinds, but we were quite careful as there were only 3 of us on board. And yes, anything about 4 knots and it's almost impossible to hang on. So, we only did it when we were somewhat becalmed. That said, I took many makeshift baths, dragging behind the boat. I was on 8 boats in total, on my circumnavigation.
I can't imagine the intensity of losing a crew member in the water in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Standing watch at night, we were very careful moving around the boat, using a jackline and keeping our lifejackets on. If we were to fall overboard in the middle of our watch, we would never be found, because nobody would hear it and the boat would continue sailing on its path for the next several hours until the relief watchperson woke up.
I'm curious how much this trip was. As a Global Hitchhiker, I didn't pay to sail, but I did pay for my share of the consumables. Food, alcohol, fuel, marina and country entrance fees were all shared.