Taken from its mooring, a boat sails into a hurricane and a mystery.
Issue 146: Sept/Oct 2022
My wife, son, and I had sailed our C&C 35-3, Secret Plans, around Nova Scotia for 11 years and made countless wonderful memories aboard her with friends and family. Coastal cruising and the occasional race were highlights. The annual guys’ “fishing mission” was always an adventure.
Along the way, we also put a lot of work into her with repairs and upgrades including a new rudder, anchor windlass, hydronic heat, mainsail, fresh wiring, and the list goes on. We were happy sailors.
Secret Plans at sunset at a mooring ball in Rogue’s Roost, a hideout near Halifax accessible only by water. A favorite destination, it’s a reasonable day sail and is always calm.
All of that came to an abrupt halt with one shocking phone call from a friend on Friday, September 10, 2021.
“Are you on your boat?” the voice on the other end frantically asked. “The Coast Guard is looking for you!”
We had sailed Secret Plans the previous weekend and left her tied on her mooring on Sunday evening, as we had so many times before. After assuring my friend we were fine, I hung up.
Then the phone immediately rang again.
This time it was the Canadian Coast Guard asking if we were on the boat and in distress. Assuring them we were not, they said the Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) that is registered in my name and lives aboard Secret Plans was transmitting more than 300 miles offshore, currently near the eye of Hurricane Larry. I assured them we were not out sailing, that it must be a glitch of some sort, and that we would get our hands on the beacon as soon as possible to sort things out.
My wife, Jill, was closest to the local yacht club where we moor the boat, and she headed over to assess the situation. The next call I got was from her.
“The boat is gone!” She checked the mooring, and it was in perfect shape. Secret Plans had been untied and stolen.
The Search
The next few days were a surreal blur. First came many more calls with both the Canadian and United States coast guards, updating me on the search and asking additional details about the boat. Did she have a life raft? No. Was there a VHF onboard? Yes, one fixed and two handhelds. What type and quantity of flares? A dozen Orion 12-gauge. How old was the battery in the PLB? Old.
Secret Plans sails through some rain and fog off the Nova Scotia Atlantic coast last summer.
I enjoyed sailing the boat solo, so she was set up well with a belowdecks autopilot, furling jib, and all lines running aft. She had the normal assortment of safety gear on board, tools and spares, a full water tank, a good amount of nonperishable food, the PLB, and, of course, some rum.
Since the PLB had to be manually switched on, it was clear that its activation was a deliberate act that ultimately prompted the search and rescue. The GPS location it transmitted then showed it passing directly through the eye of Hurricane Larry. At the time and location of the PLB alert, the storm was reported to have maximum sustained winds of 75 knots with higher gusts.
Accordingly, conditions in the area on the morning of September 10 were too harsh to allow for a search, but on Friday evening a search aircraft saw flares—which is why it was important for the searchers to know what types of flares were on board. Aircraft flew out of the U.S. and Canada, and a Canadian Coast Guard cutter was on site by late Saturday. Finally, on Sunday I was informed the search was over, without success. There was no further sign of Secret Plans.
The Suspect
The leading theory in the heist of Secret Plans is that an individual who had been arrested for smuggling drugs into Canada by sailboat had escaped custody and stolen the boat. He had an RYA Yachtmasters certification, lots of sailing experience, and would have been highly motivated to get out of the country.
This suspect was spotted on video entering another yacht club a few days earlier where a Nonsuch 26 was stolen. That escape went wrong when the life ring came loose and its line fouled the propeller. The boat blew ashore at the mouth of Halifax Harbor, and that first attempt failed in the tail of Hurricane Ida.
Sam, Graham’s son, and his friend, Tuskar, enjoy a snack hanging on the boom while sailing Secret Plans out of Halifax Harbor.
It is thought that he then made his way to our yacht club, stole a dinghy, and rowed out to Secret Plans. The boat’s AIS was briefly turned on, and there is a ping showing it outside Halifax Harbor early Tuesday morning, which fits the timeline.
Did he steal the boat Tuesday and sail off only to encounter Hurricane Larry by accident? Unless he is found alive, or some other evidence is discovered, we will never know for sure.
The story was bizarre enough to get picked up by various media outlets and spiraled into a frenzy on some marine and sailing websites. Now, in the local sailing world, I’ve become the guy whose boat was stolen and lost in a hurricane. It’s not the sort of fame one wants, but so it goes.
Three months later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police declared the case closed and unresolved.
The Aftermath
Many questions remain, and while we are very sad to have lost our beloved good old C&C 35-3 Secret Plans, it is also tragic that someone almost certainly has lost his life. It is very discomforting to think that this person fought for his life aboard our boat, likely wearing my foul weather gear, and lost this last fight.
While I had never expected to encounter a hurricane on Secret Plans, I do wonder what, if anything, I could have done differently to better equip the boat and crew to survive. What worked and what failed? Did the boat fail or was the crew too exhausted to cope with the conditions? What would have made that difference between survival and loss? The boat wasn’t equipped with a life raft; would that have helped?
In the end, we must move on. Secret Plans is gone, and our family of sailors has new plans. The insurance paid out, and we have purchased another boat. We are now the proud owners of a Canadian Sailcraft 36 Traditional, another gem of the early 1980s. We’ve bought her as-is, where-is, and so are working on learning the finer details of our purchase. She has been renamed Plan B in honor of Secret Plans, and of course because one should always have a plan B.
Luckily, a piece of our old boat will always be with us. The big steering wheel on Secret Plans always made the cockpit awkward to pass through at anchor, so we replaced it with a Lewmar folding wheel. We were happy to find that the original wheel from Secret Plans fits perfectly in the bigger cockpit of Plan B, where it is now installed. This wheel, with so much history and so many memories, will continue to steer us through new adventures.
Graham Collins is an engineer by day building anti-submarine warfare equipment. At night he runs “Compass Distillers,” an award-winning craft distillery, and in the remaining time he sails with his wife and son and works on upgrades for the new boat project.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
