Anatomy of a Farallon Islands yachting tragedy SAILING

On a warm spring day, the Farallon Islands are easy to see from San Francisco and Marin County - they look like painted islands on the horizon, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The Farallones are 28 miles out at sea, but are officially part of the City and County of San Francisco.

They were the scene of the worst yachting accident in years on April 14, when a 38-foot boat called Low Speed Chase was driven on the rocks while rounding the islands as part of the Full Crew Farallones Race. One sailor was killed and four are lost at sea.

What exactly happened in the seconds when the boat was overwhelmed by a breaking wave is still a mystery. But according to veteran sailors, there could only be two causes: bad luck or a fatal error in judgment.

There were also risky choices: The eight sailors aboard the Low Speed Chase wore survival gear but were not clipped to lines tethering them to the boat, so that when the wave hit, five of them were instantly swept overboard.

Impossible situation

At that point it was too late to do anything - too late to head the boat around and try to pick them up, too late to turn away from the rocks.

It was an impossible situation; five of the eight crew members were in the water, the boat was on the edge of foundering, and there were only three people left to handle the sails, or start the engine. They were close to the rocks, and the waves were coming from every direction, and they were about to be hit by another wave. They were seconds from death.

"Even a Navy SEAL would feel panic in that situation," said Kimball Livingston, editor at large of Sail magazine and an experienced ocean sailor. "I'm surprised anyone survived."

The day began at the San Francisco Yacht Club in Belvedere, home port of the Low Speed Chase. The club is the oldest yacht club on the Pacific Coast, founded 143 years ago in San Francisco; yachting is one of the oldest sports in California. The club opened in 1869, the same year college football was born on the East Coast.

The Low Speed Chase was of Australian design, "a high-end racing boat, fast, a good boat," said Andy Turpin, editor of Latitude 38, the sailing magazine in Sausalito. Boats like this would cost about $200,000, he said. The boat was owned by James Bradford, a 41-year-old San Francisco investor.

Bradford had seven in his crew, all experienced yacht sailors: Alexis Busch, Alan Cahill, Bryon Chong, Jordan Fromm, Marc Kasanin, Elmer Morrissey, and Nick Vos. Cahill, who like Morrissey was born in Ireland, was a professional sailor. It appears likely that he was at the helm during the race.

Bradford, Chong and Vos survived. The others were lost. The lives of the crew were intertwined, in the way of people who follow the salt water. Busch and Vos were sweethearts who met at Redwood High School in Larkspur 10 years ago. The others were from boating families: Kasanin, whose father was a maritime lawyer from Belvedere, had been sailing since he was 5 years old.

Race run since 1907

The Full Crew Farallones Race is a tradition: It has been run since 1907, only a year after the great earthquake nearly destroyed San Francisco. The first boat to win, the schooner Yankee, still sails out of San Francisco.

The race is sanctioned by the Offshore Yacht Racing Association in Alameda and sponsored by the San Francisco Yacht Club. There are strict rules for equipment the boats must carry, including radios and "adequate personal buoyancy" equipment. Every crew member must sign a release that says "sailing is an activity that has an inherent risk of damage and injury. Competitors ... are participating entirely at their own risk."

The race started at 9:50 a.m. at a line in the bay in front of the St. Francis Yacht Club, just off the Marina Green in San Francisco. Forty-nine boats started the race.

Rough start

The Low Speed Chase did not get off to a good start. The wind died while the boat was still in the bay, and it had to anchor for some time. It is not clear how long the boat was delayed, but Turpin thinks the delay was ironic, considering what happened. "It meant they had no chance to win. They were way behind."

The race course leads out the Golden Gate, past the headlands, out into the ocean, heading for Southeast Farallon Island, which has a lighthouse on top of a 357-foot-tall hill. Racers have to sail around the island and then head back to San Francisco.

The weather forecast that day was for seas running 11 to 13feet high, at 14-second intervals. "That was what was forecast, and that was what we got," said Michael Moradzadeh, who sailed in the race. "It was unpleasant, but not unmanageable."

The weather was clear, good visibility, no haze, no fog. The wind was blowing from the northwest about 20 knots. "These conditions were not extreme," said Steve Hocking, who also raced that day. More than half of the boats that started the race rounded the Farallones and made it back to San Francisco Bay.

'Brutal' lee shore

What went wrong?

The first problem is the Farallones themselves - "beautiful in an otherworldly, moonscape sort of way," Livingston said. "Desolate, pounded by seas kicked up by the edge of the continental shelf, uninhabited except for a few rugged biologists - when you've rounded the Farallones, you've been someplace."

Most sailors give them a wide berth - in part because of the jagged rocks - "as brutal a lee shore as anyone can imagine," Livingston said, in part because the swells intensify when you get too close.

The sea swells come rolling across the ocean for thousands of miles, but they get bigger close to land, even a small land mass such as the Farallon Islands. When the sea bottom gets shallower, the waves kick up, like surf. They come from all directions, not just one. Confused seas, mariners call them. This means the closer you get to the islands, the rougher it is. Ten-foot seas can become 15-foot seas; 15-foot seas can go to 18-foot seas, or more.

"We always take great care when we get close to the islands," said Master Chief Petty Officer Greg Teagle, skipper of the 87-foot Coast Guard cutter Sockeye, which went to the rescue of the stricken yacht.

"It's hard to talk about this," Turpin said. "None of us were there."

Corner cut too close

But some were nearby. Hocking, who has a Coast Guard master's license, was at the helm of his own boat, not far away. He thinks the Low Speed Chase cut the corner too close to the island and was caught, a calculated risk that went bad, so that when the big wave broke it was in the wrong place.

"I think they might have been unlucky," Turpin said. "Things can go bad very quickly out there."

Being at the helm of a boat calls for judgment, experience, and skill; gauging the seas, the wind, the way the boat moves, the skill of the crew, the feel of it. Professional sailors, like professional athletes, are thought to have an edge, to know a bit more, to rely on their own skill to cut it close. "They may have misjudged how much leeway they had," Turpin said. "Everybody wants to look for the big mistake - how close is too close?"

'Somebody's mistake'

"It's definitely somebody's mistake," Hocking said. "As brutal as it is to say so, that is what happened."

When the boat was hit and most of the crew went over the side, it was pretty much all over. "We have procedures, (for people overboard) and we practice them, but it's not a real situation," Moradzadeh said. The situation, he said, called for "virtually superhuman skill and discipline."

"My heart breaks for the helmsman or skipper who has to make the decision as to what to do."

Next, the boat was on the rocks in an inlet on Maintop Island, a rocky islet separated from Southeast Farallon by a narrow, impassible channel. Hocking saw three people on the shore - "on the beach," he called it - but there was no way he could get his sailboat in to help.

Mayday sent

An emergency transponder sent an automatic signal to the Coast Guard. Moradzadeh also sent a Mayday radio transmission. The cutter Sockeye, which was just off Sausalito, headed out at flank speed. Even then it took an hour: "We had really big seas, 12- and 14-footers, some maybe 16 feet," said the Coast Guard's Teagle. "A rough ride."

"It's our duty," he said. "It's what we sign up for, what we train for."

Even then, the Coast Guard cutter couldn't get close to the wrecked boat. A Coast Guard helicopter took two survivors off, and an Air National Guard chopper got the third survivor. "A fantastic job," Teagle says. "Right off the cliff face."

Chong, who lives in Tiburon, is the only survivor who has made any public statement. "I am absolutely devastated at the sudden and tragic boat accident," he wrote.

"We'll spend years looking back on this weekend, asking questions that may never have answers."