Indian Ocean- Nine Days on Raft after Losing Keel

by Avirama Golan, www.haaretz.com/Sail-World on 3 Dec 2007 At the beginning of November, Libi Belozerzki, a brain-research student at Tel Aviv University, celebrated her 27th birthday. An observer might not have understood why the friends of the tall, smiling young woman were so moved. But they had good reason to be:

Just a few weeks earlier, she had returned from a maritime adventure that had thrilled the local - and international - sailing community. For nine days she was swept along by the currents of the Indian Ocean on a small life raft, without food or means of communication, and with only small rations of water, until she was spotted by the crew of a tugboat, who took her aboard.

An experienced sailer and a skipper since the age of 17, Libi had joined Pierpaolo Mori, 34, a professional skipper from Italy, with whom she had sailed previously for a year and a half, from the Caribbean via the Panama Canal to Tahiti. The young woman, who grew up in Haifa and began sailing boats at age 15, had come to enjoy two-person sailing, coping with strong winds and rough seas, and experiencing the breathtaking beauty of endless seas and star-strewn skies.

The latest cruise was planned as a leisurely voyage from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka, to the Red Sea, and from there to Israel via the Suez Canal. The twosome's yacht, 'GiGo2,' was quite new and highly sophisticated, built by one of Italy's largest manufacturers of sea-craft for an Italian businessman and amateur sailor.
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Belozerzki lights up when she describes the boat: a 54-footer made of light carbon, designed as a competitive racer on the outside, including a cockpit and a stern open to the sea, but spacious, comfortable and equipped for leisure sailing. From the beginning of September, the two prepared the vessel for a long journey. They replaced the filters, checked the pumping and drainage systems, and studied the currents and winds along their planned route. And they did everything - including affixing a sharp knife to the exterior of the life raft on the stern - on their own. 'That knife,' she emphasizes, 'is very important. I will explain why afterward.'

On September 19, they sailed from Male, the capital of the Maldives, and were soon on the open sea. The summer monsoons were over, the winter typhoons had not yet begun. 'Our plan was to cover 2,300 miles [about 3.700 kilometers] in one leg to Eritrea,' Belozerzki says. On their previous voyage they had done 3,200 miles in one leg across the Pacific, and a journey of three weeks or a month seemed logical.

Everything, then, was ready on September 19. 'We set out well,' she says, explaining that everything went as planned. The weather forecast, which they saw on the Internet on a laptop, through a satellite-phone connection, was also promising. The wind was between 15 and 20 knots, 'and that is exactly what a boat like this needs in order to sprint. You have to understand,' she says, becoming excited, 'she is a light racer, and the area of her mainsail alone is 100 square meters. In the Pacific we used a spinnaker and she reached 14 knots.' This means that with a downwind that enables a regular boat to move ahead nicely, they flew at a tremendous speed. In a reasonable wind, they reduced the area of the sail to avoid excessively strong pressure and excessive listing.

This time, too, they decided to open the huge mainsail only partway. The weather was reasonable, with only occasional squalls shattering the calm. 'We knew that the farther north we would go, the more we would stay out of the squalls' range, and we stayed on course. We really missed them later on the raft, when not even a drop of water fell on us.'

Squalls make for hard work. 'After five days we were worn out: going up, going down, trimming the sails, opening them, barely resting and even during sleep hearing the sea and what is happening with it all the time. No, as a matter of fact it wasn't hard for us as a pair; on the contrary, in these situations we get along best by ourselves. There is hardly any talking; each person knows exactly what his task is and what he is doing at any given moment. You stay alert and stay in eye contact. In retrospect, it's fortunate we didn't have another person with us. One more on the life raft would have really complicated things.

'Despite the forecasts, the wind continued to get stronger. On the sixth day it was already 30 knots and it was a bit tough. We took down the jib and trimmed the stay sail and mainsail [to reduce the area of the sails to a minimum], to reduce the pressure of the wind on the boat. Now that I think about it, the sixth day was actually the last day of our journey. It wasn't terrible. In oceanic terms, the weather conditions were not severe. Not even when the wind and the waves rose.'

The two sailors decided to check the weather forecast again. Mori contacted an Italian meteorological station and Belozerzki called a friend in Israel, 'which is something I never do.' Both sources offered similar forecasts: high seas for 24 hours, then calm.

'We lowered the mainsail completely,' she recalls, 'and then we changed course and headed east.'

Instead of north.

'Yes. We decided to sail on a tail wind and get back on course later. At first Pier didn't really want to do that. He preferred to stick to the schedule. But by the time I started to argue, the sea had already persuaded him. The waves rose to four and five meters, the wind was steady at 40 knots, sometimes a bit less, and we went with it.'

Now things were a bit easier. 'In the morning we contacted the owner and told him we were changing course. Then we started to prepare to get through the next 24 hours. At last it was possible to cook a hot meal. Pier can live off sandwiches, but I have to eat cooked food when sailing. Still, I didn't really eat, because I was tired. Afterward, on the raft, I was angry at myself for not having eaten a good dinner.

'I told Pier that we had to sleep. I knew it was going to be a hard night. Before sundown we called again. I told Mom that everything was fine, and Pierpaolo told the owner that night was falling and gave him our bearings. Then he suddenly said something he had never said before. If we don't call in the morning, he told the owner, it will be a sign that something happened. I didn't take any notice - didn't ask him why he suddenly said that we wouldn't call in the morning. It's only now that I think about it.

'Be that as it may,' she continues, 'by now the sun had set and it began to get dark. We decided that at first we would sit in the cockpit and make sure everything was all right. Night fell, and we saw that the boat was stable and that we could get a little sleep. I told Pier to go below first, and he did. At the end of my watch I saw that he was still sleeping and I thought to myself: Never mind, give him another 40 minutes. You know, we hadn't slept for such a long time, and if you already fall asleep in conditions like this, it's worth sleeping really well.

'So I sat alone in the cockpit, wearing a storm suit and tied to a security harness. I moved back and forth between the cold, wet wheel and the transparent, warm, dry plastic spray-protector. It was cold, sea-cold, and the boat was already sailing only on storm jib and we went on like that for maybe another quarter of an hour.'

And then?

'And then I suddenly heard this noise, a kind of creaking or cracking, but not loud. And also very brief. Strange, I thought, and jumped up to see what it was. I thought the noise had come from inside, but Pier, who apparently heard it a lot more strongly, thought something had broken outside and rushed out straight from sleep. We met on the stairs. We asked each other what happened. The noise didn't sound good. Then Pier said he was going to take over for me and went below for a minute, just to put on a storm suit, and right then the boat suddenly listed.

'I was harnes