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near-hurricane-force sustained gusts and crashing waves against the port wing. The boat just kept rolling. In a flash it had turtled, and lay upside down in the troubled water.
    The lightning helped those struggling under the surface to orient themselves. Quick-release tether snaphooks allowed some to free themselves quickly from their harnesses and surface beside the boat, while others needed help. Everything happened very quickly in the chaos of water and thunder, and the crew was going mostly on instinct, fighting to escape the water. One crew had been in the cabin and had to find his way out and down through the tangle of lines and rigging.
    Within a couple of minutes six crew had their heads above water and some were able to clamber up onto the hull. The boat tossed in the waves, and the rain blown hard by the wind was blinding. Peter saw that Mark and Suzanne were still missing and pulled his way around the boat, plunging his head below the surfaceto look below the boat. At one point he spotted Suzanne under the hull, and in a burst of lightning saw her mouth was open, her eyes open and lifeless. He could not reach her tether to release it but knew it was too late anyway. But there was still hope for Mark, who might be alive in an air pocket beneath the boat or might be drifting in the water nearby.
    The other non-family crew clung to the hull thinking of his mother. While pregnant with him she had lost her husband, the father he’d never met, to drowning in another Lake Michigan boating accident.
    Crew on the inverted hull had already activated their PLBs (personal locator beacons) when Peter finally gave up his search for Mark. The thunderstorm cell that had struck them was slowlymoving on, the lightning a little farther away, but the wind was still strong and waves were still washing over the hull. It wasn’t dark enough for them to see the running lights of the nearest sailboats, but even though they felt alone in the storm they were blowing the whistles attached to their PFDs and waving their strobes and flashlights.

    WingNuts
floating upside down the day after the incident. (AP Photo/John L. Russell)
    The crew of a sailboat a half mile away heard their whistles and, although battling the thunderstorm as well, was able to rescue the six
WingNuts
crew long before the Coast Guard’s rescue boat and helicopter reached the area. Several other sailboats also joined in the search for anyone missing in the water near the capsized boat.
    As soon as the crew of the rescuing boat learned of the missing two sailors, they radioed a request for rescue divers, but Peter knew it was too late. Divers later recovered the bodies of Mark and Suzanne, who was still tethered to the center jackline. Both had suffered head injuries when the boat flipped to starboard and the port-side wing crashed down on them.

    U.S. Sailing conducted a thorough inquiry and issued a report 3 months later, which some of this retelling is based on. Recommendations from the panel’s experts included considerations for increased safety training and safety gear, such as types of tethers, but the most significant issue focused on a sailboat’s stability index, or its ability to recover from a knockdown or capsize
.
    The implications were that
WingNuts’
crew were well prepared and did everything right but that the boat itself was not an appropriate design for such conditions. In races, the organizers can decide what entries to allow based on the boat, required equipment, crew characteristics and experience, and other factors. In recreational sailing, however, the sailors themselves decide what conditions their own boats, and their own experience and gear, can withstand. These are personal decisions, of course, and sometimes “fluke” accidents do occur, but usually, as most of the stories in this book show, the final outcomes could have been prevented
.
Rally Boat to Bermuda
    Every fall a large number of cruising boats leave the