The Rescue Case

The Rescue

Sunlight glistened off of the gentle rolling waves that surrounded the boat. A few days ago, the large sum of money required to charter the 38 foot long yacht for a week had seemed excessive, but now, a couple of days into the trip, we could all agree that it was worth every cent. My family of four had departed on the charter from a small French Polynesian island, and have spent our time onboard relaxing in the sun on the deck, as well as having had the opportunity to swim with large sea turtles many times. The captain is now taking us further out to sea, where we are hoping to spot some whales majestically breaching.

The further out we travel, the bigger the rolling waves are becoming, but I am not phased as the warmth from the sun seems to have a calming effect on me, and besides, there is not a threatening cloud in the sky.

We are not successful in spotting any whales today, which is strange for this time of year, the captain tells us. I decide to turn in for the night, and leave the captain and the rest of my family to drop anchor and to complete the routine radio checks. As I lay my head on the pillow I can hear reasonably clearly the conversation over the radio. It sounds as if there could be a storm coming. I jump out of bed and rejoin my family to hear more. The captain tells us that there is a mild-moderate storm front approaching and that it is advised that we head back to shallower coastal areas, but that it is up to us what we choose to do. We quickly decide that as the storm is only predicted to be of mild-moderate severity, we would stay put instead of cutting our holiday short. The captain conformed to our decision, and we set to work tying down anything that might come loose or fall off in the storm. Once finished, we all decide to go to bed.

I am woken in the night by the violent lurching of our vessel. I carefully get out of my bed and wake up the rest of my family, who then alert the captain to the situation outside. He immediately radios out for help and further information on the storm, but finds that he can get no signal due to interference. We rush to prepare a liferaft for deployment if needed. I collect drinkable water while the other members of my family hurry around to collect other necessary items. It isn’t long before the yacht lurches too far to one side and begins to take on water. Our captain, trained for an emergency situation like this, springs into action and deploys the liferaft. We all climb aboard and the captain orders us to help him paddle the raft away from the quickly submerging vessel