Hi Larry,

Thank you.

I missed a bunch of clues when talking with Cha Cha's captain on the radio. All I could think of at the time was that we had just been through the worst storm, and that they were badly damaged, in danger, and in need of assistance.

I mistakenly thought that their engine had failed due to something that happened in the storm... I didn't realize that they had actually left Newport without a working engine... that it was suffering from overheating which is usually something very easy to fix... I also mistakenly thought that their staysail roller furler had become damaged in the storm, but later realized that they left Newport to go out in the Atlantic in a season plagued with high wind storms with a completely inoperable staysail roller furler as well.. probably the most important sail to have in a storm... I also thought their steering was somehow completely disabled by the storm beyond repair at sea... but in Bermuda my friend went aboard, tightened a hydraulic fitting with a 1/4 turn with a wrench, and they regained steering....

Had I realized that they weren't ready for this kind of voyage from the start, then I think I would have been much more cautious...

Cha Cha's rudder was locked steering them hard to port 100% of the time, and she constantly wavered between being directly behind me or 90 degrees to my port. Occasionally with her additional 10' LWL she would actually gain speed and pull ahead of me by as much as 50 feet... So we had a agreement. Since I was single handed and the tow was to last for days I would have to cat nap for as much as 10-15 minutes at a time.. With two aboard their vessel they would take watches to keep a constant lookout for possible collision. He didn't. At one point I saw that our boats were dangerously close to each other and just waited and watched. With binoculars I could see that no one was in their cockpit keeping watch. No one sounded the alarm.. Minutes later the boats drifted further apart and then I saw him come out in the cockpit... This was my biggest mistake... I should have screamed that they weren't keep watch and keeping with our agreement... I should have told them that if that had happened again or if I found them not keeping watch again then I would discontinue the tow... But I was so sleep deprived by this point that I just let it go... I thought "We're almost there... Just one more day..." Nothing like being woke up from the deepest sleep, in the middle of the night to the violent sound and shaking of a head on boat collision.. My adrenaline hadn't been that high in years if ever...

Immediately after we cut the tow line and I put safe distance between us I asked.. The captain said that it all just happened too fast for him to realize that we were going to collide... But I suspect that he was asleep..

I would do it again, but I'd be a heck of a lot more cautious.. I'd want information about why their boat had failed.. And I'd keep a watch on them keeping watch..

To this day I never thought about taking them aboard my boat before the tow... Maybe we should have done that! They would have been a lot more useful keeping watch with me on my boat than they were on theirs.

I'd like to point out that the 1 crew aboard was completely new to that boat... With very limited offshore sailing experience, she had just responded to the captain's ad on 'findacrew.net' and flown over from England to make this voyage. She tried for days to fix their SSB radio to call for help... and thank goodness she was aboard and understood that they could broadcast a pan pan on their VHF and did so every 15 minutes.. I'm scared to imagine what would have happened if she had not been there to understand that they could do that..

Drake