Bobcat
Founding Member
From the Miami New Times (a liberal rag)
An Ill-Fated Test Spin of a New Boat Ends in Disaster
A A AComments (0) By Kyle Swenson Thursday, Nov 14 2013
Neither land nor rescue craft was in sight. An hour after his 21-foot catamaran had plummeted 2,100 feet to the bottom of the sea, bulky Seattle boat broker Sandy Williamson was treading water in six-foot swells 15 miles off Miami.
"OK, I'm going to pray now," Williamson called to his comrade while silently beaming up a plea.
Just a few inches away, Corey Whittaker, a wiry and bearded 29-year-old, shivered in the cold water. Without the life jacket, he might have already drowned.
God, I'm stupid, Williamson thought. Then he began to ponder the sharks. If they came, he resolved to act as a decoy.
Fifteen miles out to sea, Williamson (left) snapped a picture of himself and Whittaker.
Photo courtesy of Sandy Williamson
Fifteen miles out to sea, Williamson (left) snapped a picture of himself and Whittaker.
"I would swim out as far as I could and slash my leg with a pocketknife," the 60-year-old recalled two days later, tears pouring from his eyes and sobs shaking his thick chest. "He's got his whole life ahead of him. I've had a great life. I'm ready."
A half-hour before on that cloudy October 27, the two had watched their boat sink. They were floating in the same waters where two weeks earlier, four Haitians had drowned after their 25-foot sport fisher had capsized. Florida leads the nation in boating fatalities.
Williamson is a hearty, adventuresome guy who usually can't get to the end of a sentence without his ruddy face splitting into a smile. He had been in Florida barely a week, hoping to lure buyers to his unique line of catamarans at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.
Boating had always been center stage in Williamson's life. He was born on the Atlantic Ocean, in Argentina, and raised just a few miles from the Pacific Coast near Palo Alto. He began sailing with friends in high school, and by the time he was a student at Berkeley, he and his future wife, Debbie, had pooled $1,100 for a sailboat. On their first trip on San Francisco Bay, they towed a disabled boat to shore. "That's the way it's always been with me and sailing," Williamson says. "Trial by fire."
Soon after graduation, Williamson took a job with the U.S. Geological Survey; he and Debbie did stints in California and Texas before landing in Seattle. In 2010, he retired from government work after 35 years.
The couple opened a boat brokerage. Lately, they'd been pitching the HeliCat, an Argentine 21.5-foot fiberglass catamaran. The two hulls supported a central open cockpit shaped like a bladeless helicopter. Williams bought molds for the design, tweaked the blueprints, and created a 2,200-pound version that could top out at 33 knots on twin 60-horsepower engines. It was a Jet Ski with the stability of a power boat. Price tag: $70,000.
But even after investing $250,000 into the project, Williamson had never taken one for a spin on the open ocean. That's where Fort Lauderdale and the ill-fated trip to the Gulf Stream came in. This past October, he decided to head to South Florida for the boat show and pilot the HeliCat 50 miles to Bimini. Heck, I'm going to prove this thing can work, he remembers thinking.
But Williamson didn't want to ride solo, so he sent an email to the local USGS branch asking if anyone would be interested in tagging along. An hour later, his inbox pinged with an answer from Whittaker. For the young field tech, the invite was a chance at random adventure. He often skipped air boats over remote patches of the Everglades, but the sea would be something different.
A little after 8 a.m. Sunday, the pair met at Haulover Marina and boarded the bright-yellow HeliCat. They headed out through the fast waters of Haulover Cut toward a sun wrapped in clouds.
The weather report was iffy: eight- to ten-mile-per-hour winds increasing to ten to 12 by midafternoon, but Williamson figured the HeliCat would slice easily through to Bimini in three and a half hours.
With Williamson at the helm and Whittaker in the back seat, the HeliCat pushed on at a steady 15 knots. Outside of occasional mumbles about the waves, both men were quiet. It was a friendly silence, though, and Williamson recalls thinking the younger man was about same age as his four children.
An hour into the ride, Williamson stopped the HeliCat, and the men took turns balancing on the hulls for a pee break.
When they started again, Williamson checked his Samsung Galaxy to find they still had about 60 percent of the trip left. Then he looked over and was shocked. A 14-by-16-inch hatch had ripped clean off the left hull. As water rushed in, anchor ropes and inflatable fenders gurgled out.
Williamson shouted for Whittaker to turn the boat around so they could look for the missing piece. But as they reversed course, water topped off the storage space, adding 500 pounds to the HeliCat; incoming waves bashed the right hull, and a second hatch was torn away. Now both hulls were filling with water.
Williamson knew his handiwork was done for. Rather than panic, though, he went on autopilot. "Corey," he said, "get the locator beacon out and press the button."
"You know that's going to call the Coast Guard?"
"Yeah, that's exactly what I want it to do."
Both men prepared for the water. Whittaker strapped on a life jacket while Williamson collected a length of yellow rope, his duffle, and a flotation cushion. Then the boat capsized. The two men were in the water, tethering together whatever they could collect. It was 9:45 a.m.
An Ill-Fated Test Spin of a New Boat Ends in Disaster
A A AComments (0) By Kyle Swenson Thursday, Nov 14 2013
Neither land nor rescue craft was in sight. An hour after his 21-foot catamaran had plummeted 2,100 feet to the bottom of the sea, bulky Seattle boat broker Sandy Williamson was treading water in six-foot swells 15 miles off Miami.
"OK, I'm going to pray now," Williamson called to his comrade while silently beaming up a plea.
Just a few inches away, Corey Whittaker, a wiry and bearded 29-year-old, shivered in the cold water. Without the life jacket, he might have already drowned.
God, I'm stupid, Williamson thought. Then he began to ponder the sharks. If they came, he resolved to act as a decoy.
Fifteen miles out to sea, Williamson (left) snapped a picture of himself and Whittaker.
Photo courtesy of Sandy Williamson
Fifteen miles out to sea, Williamson (left) snapped a picture of himself and Whittaker.
"I would swim out as far as I could and slash my leg with a pocketknife," the 60-year-old recalled two days later, tears pouring from his eyes and sobs shaking his thick chest. "He's got his whole life ahead of him. I've had a great life. I'm ready."
A half-hour before on that cloudy October 27, the two had watched their boat sink. They were floating in the same waters where two weeks earlier, four Haitians had drowned after their 25-foot sport fisher had capsized. Florida leads the nation in boating fatalities.
Williamson is a hearty, adventuresome guy who usually can't get to the end of a sentence without his ruddy face splitting into a smile. He had been in Florida barely a week, hoping to lure buyers to his unique line of catamarans at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.
Boating had always been center stage in Williamson's life. He was born on the Atlantic Ocean, in Argentina, and raised just a few miles from the Pacific Coast near Palo Alto. He began sailing with friends in high school, and by the time he was a student at Berkeley, he and his future wife, Debbie, had pooled $1,100 for a sailboat. On their first trip on San Francisco Bay, they towed a disabled boat to shore. "That's the way it's always been with me and sailing," Williamson says. "Trial by fire."
Soon after graduation, Williamson took a job with the U.S. Geological Survey; he and Debbie did stints in California and Texas before landing in Seattle. In 2010, he retired from government work after 35 years.
The couple opened a boat brokerage. Lately, they'd been pitching the HeliCat, an Argentine 21.5-foot fiberglass catamaran. The two hulls supported a central open cockpit shaped like a bladeless helicopter. Williams bought molds for the design, tweaked the blueprints, and created a 2,200-pound version that could top out at 33 knots on twin 60-horsepower engines. It was a Jet Ski with the stability of a power boat. Price tag: $70,000.
But even after investing $250,000 into the project, Williamson had never taken one for a spin on the open ocean. That's where Fort Lauderdale and the ill-fated trip to the Gulf Stream came in. This past October, he decided to head to South Florida for the boat show and pilot the HeliCat 50 miles to Bimini. Heck, I'm going to prove this thing can work, he remembers thinking.
But Williamson didn't want to ride solo, so he sent an email to the local USGS branch asking if anyone would be interested in tagging along. An hour later, his inbox pinged with an answer from Whittaker. For the young field tech, the invite was a chance at random adventure. He often skipped air boats over remote patches of the Everglades, but the sea would be something different.
A little after 8 a.m. Sunday, the pair met at Haulover Marina and boarded the bright-yellow HeliCat. They headed out through the fast waters of Haulover Cut toward a sun wrapped in clouds.
The weather report was iffy: eight- to ten-mile-per-hour winds increasing to ten to 12 by midafternoon, but Williamson figured the HeliCat would slice easily through to Bimini in three and a half hours.
With Williamson at the helm and Whittaker in the back seat, the HeliCat pushed on at a steady 15 knots. Outside of occasional mumbles about the waves, both men were quiet. It was a friendly silence, though, and Williamson recalls thinking the younger man was about same age as his four children.
An hour into the ride, Williamson stopped the HeliCat, and the men took turns balancing on the hulls for a pee break.
When they started again, Williamson checked his Samsung Galaxy to find they still had about 60 percent of the trip left. Then he looked over and was shocked. A 14-by-16-inch hatch had ripped clean off the left hull. As water rushed in, anchor ropes and inflatable fenders gurgled out.
Williamson shouted for Whittaker to turn the boat around so they could look for the missing piece. But as they reversed course, water topped off the storage space, adding 500 pounds to the HeliCat; incoming waves bashed the right hull, and a second hatch was torn away. Now both hulls were filling with water.
Williamson knew his handiwork was done for. Rather than panic, though, he went on autopilot. "Corey," he said, "get the locator beacon out and press the button."
"You know that's going to call the Coast Guard?"
"Yeah, that's exactly what I want it to do."
Both men prepared for the water. Whittaker strapped on a life jacket while Williamson collected a length of yellow rope, his duffle, and a flotation cushion. Then the boat capsized. The two men were in the water, tethering together whatever they could collect. It was 9:45 a.m.
