Fatal Storm Read Free Page A

scrub. Then someone jokingly suggested there might be sharks around – so that was it. Everyone got out of the water. It was time for lunch and a couple of quiet drinks.”
    That evening, with Business Post Naiad tucked safely away back at the dock at the CYC, the crew headed for the crowded outdoor bar to relax over a few beers. The mood was buoyant yet anticipatory, and almost inevitably, the conversation turned to the weather forecast.
“Go easy on the Christmas dinner if you don’t like sailing to windward.” That was the early advice from leading yachting meteorologist Roger “Clouds” Badham in The Australian on December 17, 1998. “It all depends on a low that looks like forming off the New South Wales south coast late next week.” Badham was basing his predictions on the current “American model” – a long-range weather forecast developed from a computer analysis of the existing world weather patterns. “Any forecast outside six days for these things can only be described as ‘fuzzy’ at best,” Badham said. “There have been intense and sometimes cyclonic lows active in the Tasman Sea over the past six weeks.”
    It was mid-November 1998 when prominent Australian sailor David Witt went to Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands and Witt’s newly adopted home. He had an agreement to train young local sailors and in return he would be able to represent the Pacific island nation in the Sydney Olympics. He also had a sponsor for the entry of a maxi yacht for the Sydney to Hobart and he wanted the yacht to represent the Cooks. Witt and his Olympic crewman, Rod Howell, headed to the home of “Papa Tom” – the man who had opened the way for them to Olympic competition. His real name is Sir Thomas Davis and he had been the nation’s Prime Minister for 10 years from 1978. He claims he still does not know why the Queen knighted him.
    Papa Tom, a very large, powerful, grey-haired man is, to say the least, a colourful character. He has two passions – sailing and riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle.Everyone knows him and everyone waves each time he blasts down the dusty roads. When not riding his Harley he drives an old Jaguar – the only one on the island. His home is at the edge of the foothills on what the locals call “the back of the island”. It has been built in the style of a chalet with a high-pitched roof, and is sited on a large area of lush green lawn dotted with tall, coconut-heavy palms. The interior of the home is spacious and open, and surrounding it is a wide verandah – features that maximise the air-flow while minimising the heat.
    On the day of their visit, Witt and Howell were warmly welcomed by Papa Tom onto the large verandah. The trio settled back into the comfortable chairs and within seconds the loquacious Witt was divulging his plan. Papa Tom liked the idea.
    Witt then took it to the next stage, recalls Papa Tom.
    “He came to me and said, ‘If this plan succeeds will you sail with us?’ I was stunned,” said Papa Tom. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m 81 years old. I’d only get in the way. I can’t pull any ropes.’ But inside me the sailor said, ‘Do it’. If you have the ocean and sailing in your blood you cannot refuse an invitation to sail in a great race like the Sydney to Hobart – even if you are 81. For me it was a dream come true.”
    Papa Tom had been educated in New Zealand and Australia. In the winter of 1952 he sailed a small yacht with his wife, two children and two crew across the Pacific from New Zealand to South America, en route to Boston where he was to become a lecturer and researcher at Harvard.
    “That was a horrendous trip. It was in a 44-foot ketch and we were sailing in mid-winter – the first small yacht ever to sail west to east in the roaring forties at that time of year. It was a 7000 mile voyage and we had 14 days of hell.”
    He spent 20 years in America and went on to become a civilian researcher for the military where he was closely