After Admiral Loy's address, Captain John Bonds, U.S. Navy (Retired), former Director of Navy Sailing, moderated the panel discussion entitled "How Much Is One Life Worth?" with panelists Bernadette Brennan Bernon, Editor, Cruising World magazine; Lieutenant Colonel Michael Canders, New York Air National Guard, Operations Officer, 106th Rescue Group, who flew in the rescue operation described in Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm; and Captain Jimmy Ng, U.S. Coast Guard, commanding Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, Alaska.
Panelists were generally against more regulations—many of which they considered unenforceable—with the exception of those stipulating particular safety equipment to be carried by vessels going offshore.
They also opposed any idea of charging people for rescues. There was a clear consensus that offshore race committees should require contestants to sail seaworthy vessels designed for heavy weather offshore—and an equally clear consensus that anyone who goes to sea must be a prudent seaman in a stout, properly equipped vessel.
Following are excerpts. Audiotapes of the complete discussion are available.
Bonds: We go to sea for a lot of reasons, but whenever you go to sea in the blue water, which we keep preaching in safety-at-sea seminars, you put yourself at hazard because we're land animals and when you're in the blue water, you are in a hazardous and alien environment, and you must be prudent and forehanded. . . . Sooner or later, if you keep doing it, you're going to have a problem and the challenge to each mariner is to be as self-sufficient as possible. . . . It is clear to me that all who go to sea . . . have first of all to be competent seamen. That is our obligation to these guys [Captain Ng and Lieutenant Colonel Canders—representing all rescuers] because if we get in trouble they're going to come out. They're going to lay their lives on the line to come get us. Our responsibility to their families is not to need them unless all else has failed; this is the sense of responsibility that we must communicate to the general public—that the freedom to put one's own life at risk has an inevitable consequence: it puts other people at risk whose job it is to come get us. . . . Racers bridle at being told what to do . . . even to the point of being required to put on a life jacket once at the start of a race. . . . If someone wishes to be irresponsible and go off on their own . . . and live with the consequences, I don't have a moral problem with that, nor do I wish to save everyone from themselves. But I do resent like hell them putting these brave men and their crews at risk when the chips are down by asking for help when they had resisted any proper preparations.
Bernon: Two kinds of sailors go to sea [in sailboats]: professional racers and recreational cruisers. I represent the recreational cruisers.
Professionals go to sea to win glory for themselves, and for the sponsors who pay their bills. . . . Recreational sailors go to sea for the independent satisfaction of traveling from place to place under sail, for the self-sufficiency, and for the closeness to nature. There is a big difference between the two—and a very big difference about how we should think about them here today. Professionals are incentivized to push the envelope, to design boats that are ultralight and ultrawide with extremely high initial stability but lacking in ultimate stability. Therefore, they flip; and when they flip, they stay flipped. They are not self-sufficient. Cruising sailors usually have boats with much safer stability equations. For a cruising sailboat, the weakest component is usually its crew. Usually, the boats themselves can take a pounding. The big [rescue] headlines have featured Isabelle Autissier [the French single-hander in the Around Alone Race, rescued by a fellow sailor after capsizing in the southern ocean], last December's Sydney-Hobart race where seven boats were lost, and last fall's Caribbean 1500 cruising race where three boats were lost. But there is a big difference between all of these examples. Isabelle Autissier was sailing a Finot 60, a boat that does not meet the stability requirements established by the Fastnet Race Committee in the wake of the 1979 Fastnet Race. [See "Reflections on the 1979 Fastnet Race," Proceedings April 1999, page 35; and "The Battle Between Speed & Stability,"Sail May 1997, pages 80-86.] The Around Alone Race Committee has not insisted on the same stability requirements. . . .
In the Sydney-Hobart Race, with very experienced racing sailors, again it was their equipment that failed them; dismastings, cabin tops ripped off. . . .
But in the Caribbean 1500, the three boats that were abandoned by their crews in fact survived, although their crews had to be lifted to safety, either because they were seasick to the point of incapacitation or their boats were dismasted because the crews were unable to get the boats to heave-to.
For racing events, we must require the organizers to set better limits on the boats' design; for cruisers we must educate, educate, educate on seamanship and heavy-weather handling.
Canders: Human life, of course, is priceless, so perhaps that one-word answer can be given to today's panel question. I had never before considered the question within a rescue framework. If someone needs help, we go without question. We are ready, willing, and able to assist whenever and wherever we can. We are proud of our mission both in peacetime and in combat and consider it a sacred trust that should not be compromised by any financial considerations.
Despite skepticism on whether efforts to educate the boating public will work, we should keep trying to get the word out . . . and let people know that their actions not only put their lives at risk but also the lives of the rescuers. As Admiral Loy said earlier, the Coast Guard probably hasn't told its story as well as it could. Based on personal experience in The Perfect Storm and the recovery of four of our crew members, the heroism of Coast Guard vessel Tamaroa, and a Coast Guard pilot named Ed DeWitt and his crew who went out and put their lives on the line—if those stories are known, people may well reconsider before putting themselves out there and potentially putting rescuers at risk.
Ng: I represent, in addition to the Coast Guard, commercial fishermen. Every spring at Kodiak, we have a ceremony—we ring a bell for those lost that year from the town. In 1983, we rang the bell 35 times. That was 35 people just from the city of Kodiak—not all of Alaska. Last spring we rang the bell only three times. The search-and-rescue case load has remained about the same over the years, but some of the equipment mentioned is having an impact. . . . Risk analysis is my game. . . . [Captain Ng followed with a riveting account of the night rescue of the crew from the fishing vessel Alska in the Shelikof Strait between Kodiak Island and the mainland, in heavy snow, during which he and his subordinates—helicopter pilots, rescue swimmers—were faced with a series of decisions on whether to continue the mission.]
In responding to a search-and-rescue case, we don't look at whether [the victim] is a man, or a woman, or a child. We don't look at whether they were stupid or smart, rich or poor. We see a life and from there it goes to risk analysis. From the operational perspective, a life cannot be measured in money or resources. I've concluded that a life is worth a life. I don't mean one-for-one. I mean that life is worth risking to save life. When we see a life at risk, we will then put people at risk. Managing that risk is the difficult part of the problem. [Regarding state licensing and education programs] it's that old constitutional issue: we guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Consider] someone rowing their 12-foot boat out to go bass fishing on a small pond versus someone taking out the cigarette boat they just bought with their new stock-market money—and who has never been on a boat before: Where do we draw the line on that liberty word?
Bonds: Most of last year's 800 boating fatalities involved small powerboats. A state licensing or educational program will address this problem: the guy in the 16-foot boat who doesn't know left from right, port from starboard. But it is not going to help people going offshore. . . . The way you learn fundamental humility as a seaman is to get humiliated.