latitude/RichardAll through the night of October 27 the J/120 J World had been making swift southward progress, broad reaching under a single-reefed main and a 90% jib. With winds of 15 to 25 knots, the sleek hull tore down the long, 15-foot swells at speeds up to 11 knots. The ride was a bit bouncy, but the crew was loving it, especially since they'd been playing catch-up to the rest of the Baja Ha-Ha fl eet after making an unplanned 4-hour pit stop at Ensenada to repair a minor engine issue.

This was offshore sailing at its best. A few minutes before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 28, Captain Eugenie Russell swung out of her berth, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and headed for the companionway.

As is her custom, she intended to do a look-around as the crew rotated watch positions on the hour. The general manager of J World sailing school, Barry Demak, was at the helm.Just as Eugenie was coming on deck, Ray Quinn, one of three student sailors aboard, yelled, "Whale!" It appeared to be bubble feeding about 200 feet off their port side. Moments later, as the 40-ft sloop rose to the top of a swell, student Judy Land spotted a second whale off the starboard beam. They appeared to be humpbacks, roughly 30 to 40 feet long. "Then Barry saw another one 100 feet in front of us," recalls Eugenie. Because they were sailing deep on starboard tack, Barry couldn't turn left for fear of jibing. Instead, he luffed up to starboard to slow down, but in doing so temporarily lost steerage as the sails began to luff. In the rough conditions they could only track the path of the huge cetaceans when the boat rose on the crests. As Barry began to regain steerage, Eugenie looked ahead: "There were these two whales about to cross our bow. We started to gain speed, a wave took us from the stern and we started to surf . . . I remember it looked like the whales were diving down. Then it was boom! It felt like we had run aground." Although Barry's recollections differ slightly, Eugenie distinctly remembers three impacts as the boat slid down three successive waves: "I remember the fi rst boom! was like running aground, which was most defi nitely the keel." (J/120s have 7- foot-deep fi n keels.) "I felt a second bang, and I think it was the prop shaft. In hindsight, the water came in so fast that it would have to have been that." With that impact the boat swiveled a bit, and Judy thought she saw blood in the water. "Then the last blow: I heard the sound of fi berglass being ripped."

The whole boat shuddered with that third collision. Eugenie remembers seeing the creature's tail rising perhaps six feet above the surface. She believes it may have swatted the boat's stern section intentionally, possibly because it thought it was being attacked.

The powerful impact caused the entire rudder assembly to be pushed up and sideways, tearing itself loose from the fi berglass hull around it. "The top of it poked through the vertical portion of the lazarette and hit me in the back of my legs," recalls Barry. A moment later he realized he had lost steerage. His busman's holiday had just taken an unexpected twist.

Eugenie quickly looked inside the lazarette to assess the damage. "I thought, 'Here we go again.'" It is darkly ironic that she had seen water coming in around the rudder of this very same boat three years ago during her fi rst Ha-Ha. But that time it was only a matter of a rudder bearing leaking. This time she could see a gaping 14-inch hole where the rudder assembly had torn away from the hull, taking a circle of fi berglass with it. Her fi rst instinct was to get a line around the rudder housing to stabilize it, but as she wrestled with it, her left hand got trapped and crushed, putting her in excruciating pain. There was little hope of regaining steerage, but she asked Barry and Ray to see if they could stabilize the rudder with lines to the winches, at least enough to slow the in-fl ow of water. And if not, stuff the sail cover and other materials into the hole to slow the fl ow. Meanwhile, she went below and grabbed the 406 EPIRB. Thinking carefully before activating it, she said to herself, "Not yet." At this point she was still hopeful that they could contain the leak. "I saw Judy," she recalls, "and thought, I need a woman for this." As she handed Judy the device, she explained, "This is your baby. Do not lose it. If you go down, it goes down with you." Having grown up sailing in Brittany, France, then later cruising and delivering boats across the South Pacifi c and elsewhere, Eugenie, now 35, decided years ago to make a profession out of her passion for sailing. In the process of earning her U.S. Coast Guard Master's license, she had thoroughly studied emergency procedures. And in her capacity as an offshore instructor for J World, she drills her students often on the 'what-ifs' involved with ocean sailing. So, as backhanded a compliment as it may be, within the 163-boat Baja Ha-Ha fleet, Eugenie Russell was probably one of the best-prepared skippers to deal with such a nightmare scenario. A crew management tactic that she understands well is keeping everyone occupied during an emergency, while communicating clearly what is expected of each crewperson at each step of the process. So, throughout the ordeal, she strove to keep everyone engaged with one task or another.

Water was already up to the floorboards as the young skipper made her first mayday calls on both 16 and 69, the Ha-Ha's fleet channel. But no one answered. She then grabbed a piece of waterproof paper, jotted down the boat's lat-long position, 29°18'4" N by 116°39'0" W, and stuffed the note in her pocket. That position is a bit less than 200 miles south of San Diego and approximately 40 miles offshore. We'd bet those coordinates will be etched in her mind forever. The idea of controlling the rudder movement soon proved to be impossible. So Eugenie directed Barry and Mark McKinnon to start working the high-volume manual bilge pump in the cockpit. A student sailor from Texas,Mark had done two previous trips aboard J World, Additional mayday calls received no answers. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Crosswave (the boat's registered name), J World (her name known to the fleet). We are taking on water. We've been hit by a whale." Eugenie worked back and forth between 16 and 69 in both English and Spanish, but had no luck. She also tried the SSB, but it had already shorted out. As the water continued to rise rapidly — now several inches above the floorboards — she grabbed the EPIRB from Judy and switched it on. Its green light shined hopefully as she tied it to Judy's lifejacket with a bowline and told her, "This is critical. Do not lose it." Poor Judy was the least experienced of the crew. Having met Eug (as she is called by friends) in Puerto Vallarta several years ago, Judy was eager to learn more about sailing, but had little ocean experience.

Mark took over pumping from Barry, vowing to Eug with convincing determination, "I will not stop until you tell me to." The boat was simply drifting at the mercy of the swells at this point, with her sails sheeted in and stalled. About 10 minutes after the collisions, Eugenie went below again to make preparations in case they had to ditch. She saw one of her Sperry boat shoes floating by and was reminded that if she ended up in the drink with her sea boots on, they might drown her. She swapped shoes, put on her Type 5 lifejacket and began passing up essentials to take in the liferaft, if it came to that: her VHF radio, a couple of knives, a Leatherman tool, the ship's papers, a waterproof bag with her handbag, passport, wallet and phones, as well as Judy's handbag, Barry's waterproof bag and other seemingly important personal gear. She grabbed the inflatable MOB device from under the chart table and asked the crew to deploy it along with the Lifesling that was kept in the cockpit. Next went two bright yellow diesel jerry jugs, as she wanted to create a visible trail of debris. A few minutes later, with no radio contact and no way to slow the incoming water, Eugenie huddled her crew together and gave them her somber assessment: "Guys, I have bad news,"

she remembers saying. "I'm not going to sugar-coat this. We are sinking and we might have to abandon ship. Get ready! I hate to tell you this, but you never step down into a liferaft, you always step up into it. We're going to wait until the last minute. I will explain to you step by step how we're going to do this, but be ready." "That's how I teach," explains Eugenie. "Every time something is about to happen, I explain things first, so they know how things work. I run a tight ship, because I have to."

As the water continued to rise in the cabin, Barry went below to grab some personal items and supplies. Pumping the bilge had become pointless. In the cockpit, Eug told Judy and Ray to unclip their harnesses, which they were initially reluctant to do. It was a harsh reality to face that the boat might actually sink out from under them. With sea water now thigh high below, Barry was quickly tossing cans of food and other supplies into the cockpit. Because it had been a raucous night, weatherwise, everyone still had on their heavy gear — under-layers, plus full foulies. That, in combination with adrenaline, kept them warm despite the rising water and flying spray. Eug picked Ray for the next chore. "Come with me," she said, leading him down a side deck past the dodger. On the cabintop behind the mast sat a Viking 8-man liferaft. "I want to be sure you know how this works," she said. "We're going to pull this string and it's going to inflate . . . Do not lose hold of this under any circumstance. Stay here!" It was now roughly 25 minutes into the ordeal. Barry had come back up the companionway because water was at the top of the steps. There was nothing more he could do belowdecks. His waterproof Pelican case with valuables inside floated up past him and he grabbed it. Eugenie came back to the cockpit to tell her first mate she thought it was time to deploy the raft. Barry agreed. Meanwhile, Mark and Judy sat quietly "with big eyes" awaiting their next instructions. Up on the cabintop, where Ray had been dutifully waiting, Barry turned to Eug and said confidently, "We're going to survive this," and gave her a kiss and a hug. They shook hands as if to cement a heart-felt pact. Just then, a wave crashed across the boat from bow to stern, wiping out the dodger, inundating the cockpit, and leaving Judy and Mark up to their chests in green water. In an instant it also washed away most of the supplies that had been gathered — including their carefully assembled ditch bag. Eugenie and Barry started pulling on the raft's ripcord. But when the line turned red, Eug flashed back to the Latitude 38 Crew List Party in September, when she and Lisa Zittel had cheerfully volunteered to pull the cord of an identical raft during a demonstration. "We're almost there. Hold on. We have to get the canister off the boat." She gave it a kick toward the rail, but when it hit the lifelines it started to inflate. To add more stress to the moment, it began to balloon out between the upper and lower lifelines, with half of it outside and half of it inside. "You are fucking kidding me!" she screamed. "Pull," she shouted to Barry and Ray. "Pull!" Eugenie remembered that there were bolt cutters down in the lazarette, but Barry had a better idea. "Cut the Spectra," he yelled, reminding her that the end of the lifelines were attached to the stern pulpit with Spectra line. Although the decks were awash, by then she tried to work her way aft to the pulpit, but another swell washed across her, pushing her underwater. She remembers thinking, "It ain't gonna happen." As she caught her breath, she turned toward the bow and felt a tug behind her. "Whoa," she thought, "that's the backstay." "The boat kept going down, down, down — fast! I saw Ray in front of me, and I saw the wind indicator . . . I could just imagine him getting caught in that spinnaker triangle, so I pushed him. I saw the Windex go down, 18 inches in front of my face, and I thought, 'That's it, the boat's really gone now!'" Suddenly treading water, she counted: "Mark, Judy, Ray, Barry." They were all there and luckily the raft was right there too, just a stroke away from each of them. As J World slipped under, the raft popped free almost instantly due to the pressure.

When Eugenie saw the Windex go down, it vividly confirmed the obvious, and shocked her into the next phase of action. "I remember thinking, 'I can't think about it. It's gone.'" The task before her then was to focus on survival. Due to the crashing waves and the drag of the sinking hull, the liferaft was almost entirely filled with water, with only a few inches of freeboard. Barry jumped up and in first, followed by Eugenie. But as she dove inside it was so full of water she had the sensation that she was drowning. Rather than bail it out immediately, however, she insisted that everyone get inside first. With the weight of five bodies inside, plus the weight of the water, the floor was deeply distended, effectively making the water inside close to three feet deep. Once they were all inside, the arduous process of bailing began. Eugenie used her baseball cap, Barry and Ray used a waterproof bag and the others used their shoes. Judy was given the handheld VHF and instructed to continue calling on 16 and 69. Initially, the raft's single opening was oriented toward the wind. "Every so often a wave would crash into the boat," remembers Eug. So she paddled it around 180°. It was dryer that way, plus, they reasoned that every time a wave crashed against the canopy it gave the raft another nudge toward shore. In the best of situations a liferaft is uncomfortable, but in these big rolling seas, the uncontrollable motion was hard to stomach — something like an amusement park ride that never stops. Two of the crew got seasick, and had to make repeated trips to the doorway to puke. At some point Eug had to pee so bad she just couldn't hold it anymore. So she stripped off her foulies and stuck her butt out the door while her mates held her legs. Modesty is senseless in such circumstances. The situation was definitely bleak, but Eug did her best to stay upbeat and positive. "I told them we're going to be famous. This is a good thing. This has really been a good experience. The EPIRB sent out our position, Wayne (the company's owner) has been called, and we're gonna be rescued." She was also hopeful that some of the Ha-Ha fleet would soon be passing their position as they sailed from San Quintin to Turtle Bay. Being the registered owner of the EPIRB, Wayne Zittel had been called, and after confirming that his boat was, in fact, sailing in that area, the Search and Rescue process was begun, with the U.S. Coast Guard coordinating efforts with the Mexican Navy. It was a truly bizarre coincidence that Coast Guard LT Kevin Sullivan was the Search and Rescue coordinator for the operation, working out of the Alameda SAR center. Not only had he crewed aboard that exact boat during Bay races, but he can be seen aboard it on the cover of the October 2008 Latitude 38! Still, it's sobering to note that due to various logistical complexities, the rescue helicopter was not actually dispatched until roughly two hours after the EPIRB was first activated. After more than two long hours of bailing, the crew had finally gotten most of the water out. But other than Barry's Pelican case, a waterproof bag and the few small personal items that they'd stuffed into their pockets, the only thing they'd successfully salvaged from the boat was a gallon jug of water. But they were very glad to have it. With things now a wee bit more comfortable, Eugenie decided to check out the contents of the raft's emergency pouch. Inside were two packets of water, some fishing gear, flares, Dramamine, and a survival manual. There was, however, no food of any kind. Mostly to pass the time and keep her crew's minds engaged, Eug began to read portions of the manual aloud. Step one was to get all the water out. Great, they'd done that. Step two was to set out the built-in sea anchor. But the setup didn't seem to make sense, as it was rigged so the doorway would be held into the wind and waves again. Still, they deployed it, but just as they thought, it spun the boat exactly where they didn't want to be. Again, they paddled it 180° around.

Next, the manual said not to give anyone any food or water for the first 24 hours. Eug chose not to read that line verbatim, instead taking a lighter approach: "Okay let's just prepare ourselves in case we have to be in here for three days. I'm not going to give you anything to eat or drink — we don't have any food anyway — so everybody's going to go on a diet," she said jokingly.

The crew wasn't exactly laughing. In fact, they said nothing, but she hoped it was comforting to them that she seemed relatively relaxed and in control. "If we're going to survive, I've got to be the leader," she thought. "If I give up, they give up." Much to her credit, she was able to keep everyone from panicking — a frightful possibility that could have become infectious.

Naturally, they were all miserably cold and wet. So at one point, to keep things light Eug said, "You know the only way to warm our bodies — 'cause I know you guys are cold; I'm cold — is to get naked, and our naked bodies are going to have to come together and get warm together."

That caught Ray's attention. Showing a spark of wit he said, "Finally!" And for a moment they all shared a much-needed breath of comic relief. Reading further in the instruction manual, Eug realized that the floor could be pumped up to make it more rigid. Mark found what seemed to be a fill plug next to him, but just as he began to try the hand pump, Ray perked up and said, "I hear something!" Eugenie listened, "You're right." It was a low, distant rumble, like the sound of a container ship passing in the distance. She popped her head out the doorway: "A helicopter! That's the U.S. Coast Guard!" she screamed. It was roughly a mile away. She remembers thinking, "Flare!" But the emergency pack only held two of them. Judy strongly encouraged her not to waste it, but Eug was determined. She aimed it skyward, pulled the cord and watched it shoot high up in the sky before finally arching into its descent.

Only at that point did it begin to emit red sparkles. To her horror, she realized that the flare was behind the pilots' line of vision. "My heart sank. I thought, 'Judy, you were right.'" "Radio! Radio!" she yelled. Barry grabbed his VHF and hailed, "Coast Guard helicopter, this is Crosswave . . ." Clearly and distinctly, a calm, confident voice replied something like, "Vessel hailing helicopter, this is the U.S. Coast

Guard. Go ahead." "My heart leaped, and I thought, 'We're saved!'" she remembers. But the ordeal wasn't over yet. "What's your position," asked the Guardsman. As Barry grabbed his handheld GPS from the Pelican case, Eugenie grabbed her own radio: "U.S. Coast Guard helicopter, we are in a liferaft. We are not in a vessel. You just passed us. Make a 180! We are in a bright orange liferaft!" "Roger that," said the airman. "He was super-nice," recalls Eug, "like a little angel saying, 'Yeah, sure, we got you.'" The helo spun around and the shipwrecked sailors heard the airman say calmly, "Roger. We have a visual." Eug dropped back to her knees with tears in her eyes. "We're saved," she thought. She felt like hugging and kissing her shipmates, but it was too soon to celebrate. She soon saw legs with flippers sticking out of the helicopter's cargo bay, and seconds later a rescue swimmer they were helped into a steel basket and hoisted aloft to safety. They had been adrift in the raft for four hours — undoubtedly four of the longest hours any of them had ever spent. As odd as it may sound, the scariest part of the whole ordeal for Eugenie was being towed by the swimmer that 50 yards across open water. She has to laugh now when she recalls asking him, "Can you go faster?" Believe it or not, this surfer/sailor claims to be terrified of swimming in open water. "I thought, 'Oh great, now a shark is going to eat me.' I really thought I was going to die then and there." Once they were all safely aboard the helo and headed back to San Diego, Cap'n Eug felt a tremendous sense of relief — she was finally off duty. The Guardsmen gave the shivering crew blankets, snacks and drinks, and tried to make them as comfortable as possible for the two-hour flight to their San Diego airbase. TV crews were lined up outside the gates awaiting interviews as if the soggy sailors were astronauts returning from was descending on a cable. Eug called the crew up to the doorway one by one to witness their rescuer approaching. After power-stroking the 50 yards from the drop zone to the raft, the rescue swimmer, wearing a dry suit, arrived at the doorway and said in a nonchalant voice, "Hi, I'm from the U.S. Coast Guard. I'm going to be taking you one at a time." His name was Scott, and as Eug recalls, "He was so cute!" One by one the survivors plopped out of the raft, rolled onto their backs and were pulled by this young hero to the drop zone. Once beneath the Helo, they were helped into a steel basket and hoisted aloft to safety. They had been adrift in the raft for four hours — undoubtedly four of the longest hours any of them had ever spent. As odd as it may sound, the scariest part of the whole ordeal for Eugenie was being towed by the swimmer that 50 yards across open water. She has to laugh now when she recalls asking him, "Can you go faster?" Believe it or not, this surfer/sailor claims to be terrified of swimming in open water. "I thought, 'Oh great, now a shark is going to eat me.' I really thought I was going to die then and there." Once they were all safely aboard the helo and headed back to San Diego, Cap'n Eug felt a tremendous sense of relief — she was finally off duty. The Guardsmen gave the shivering crew blankets, snacks and drinks, and tried to make them as comfortable as possible for the two-hour flight to their San Diego airbase. TV crews were lined up outside the gates awaiting interviews as if the soggy sailors were astronauts returning from a moon walk. They had to wait until the survivors were thoroughly debriefed, however. The process included alcohol and drug testing for the skipper.

Although they were weary from their ordeal, J World's crew was in relatively good spirits. But it would be a while before they could shake off the shock of the experience. Although calm and coherent on the surface, when offered a hot shower, Eugenie could not bring herself to get under the showerhead. Even that water seem subliminally threatening. "So, does Wayne know I sank his boat," she asked one of her Coast Guard interviewers. He did, of course. And he was extremely proud of both his captain and her crew — and thoroughly impressed with the textbook precision with which the Coast Guard brought them to safety.

The Guardsmen seemed equally impressed the J World's captain and crew. "Getting to these survivors was really a lot easier for us . . . " said the helo commander, LTJG Jonathan Ralston, "because they had everything that they needed so that we could easily find them." He and the rest of his crew, copilot LTJG William Burwell, flight mechanic AMT1 Jeremy Treichel, and rescue swimmer AST3 Scott Mochkatel, all seemed overjoyed to have been instrumental in this story's happy ending. "We see a lot of death," a CG officer told Eugenie during her debriefing.

Apparently only about 50% of EPIRB calls result in bringing any survivors back. And only about 5% result in everyone coming home safely without major injuries. "Your safe arrival to shore was a direct result of the quality of your master, Ms. Eugenie, who is the real hero." wrote Investigating Officer James Mints in an email to Barry. ". . .In short, a calm and decisive master and good reliable equipment saved your lives. I shall never forget the privilege of meeting you." What's next for Eugenie? She's still got some legitimate fears to work through. But as she says, "Sailing is my life. I want to continue. So the only thing to do is to get out and do it."