Daring rescue made headlines round the world

From NZ Herald 3 June 2004 (10th anniversary of the event)

By IAN STUART

Tucked away in Larry Robbins’ scrapbook is a citation from the Chief of Naval Staff in 1994, Rear Admiral Jack Welch.

It is to Commander Robbins, then captain of the Navy survey ship HMNZS Monowai, and the ship’s company for their role in rescuing eight people from three yachts in one of the most vicious storms to hit the Pacific north of New Zealand.

It claimed three lives and seven yachts.

The citation ends in typically understated Navy fashion with two words: “Well done.”

The citation went with Larry Robbins’ OBE for the rescue and a host of other accolades for the crew, including a mention in the United States Congressional Record.

This Sunday, 10 years to the day after the rescue, Larry Robbins, now chief executive of the National Maritime Museum in Auckland, and his friend and survivor, Peter O’Neil, 63, will sit down over a meal in Wellington and talk about a daring rescue which captured headlines around the world.

By the time the Monowai’s crew spotted Mr O’Neil’s 12.8m sloop Silver Shadow on June 6, 1994, it had lost its mast. Mr O’Neil was roped into his bunk, the agony of his broken shoulder controlled by painkillers.

In huge seas, Monowai launched its rigid-hulled inflatable boat and brought Mr O’Neil and his crew back.

It was touch and go. The inflatable crashed against the side of Monowai while the crew struggled to haul Mr O’Neil aboard. Mr Robbins said he was within seconds of abandoning the $200,000 inflatable to save the crew.

A decade later retired investment banker Mr O’Neil says he and his crew would have died if not for the crew of the Monowai.

The drama which turned into four days of the most intense search operation in New Zealand’s maritime history began early on June 3, as the fleet of yachts in the Auckland-to-Tonga race got an inkling of what was to come when a storm warning was issued from Rarotonga.

The storm warning was an understatement. Survivors estimated the winds were well over 100 knots (185km/h) and the waves were above 15 metres.

Yachts south of 30 degrees south, about the latitude of Raoul and Norfolk islands, were warned the storm was heading toward them and they should take evasive action.

For a relatively slow-moving yacht, moving out of a storm’s path is not always easy.

A few hours later the storm struck and the 13m yacht Destiny was hit by 70-knot winds and 10m seas.

In the screaming wind, Destiny’s crew declared a pan pan – a potential emergency, one below a mayday – but soon after it was in serious trouble.

As it raced before the storm with bare masts and a drogue trailing from the stern, Destiny was rolled end over end as it fell off the top of a huge wave.

The skipper broke his femur and the broken mast was wrapped around the hull, although, surprisingly, the VHF aerial on the mast still worked.

At 9.11am Destiny activated its emergency beacon and four and a half hours later was found by a searching Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion.

Within hours, at least six emergency beacons had been activated throughout the search region, including one from an empty liferaft belonging to the 12m yacht Quartermaster.

Several days later the search was abandoned for the three crew of the 12m Quartermaster – Bob and Marie Rimmer, and Marie’s son Jim Anderson – after there had been no sign of them.

Monowai was heading to Tonga when it was diverted to help the American yacht, Mary T, whose crew was reported to be exhausted. The yacht was taking water and the pumps were not coping.

On the way it found another casualty, the 12m catamaran Ramtha, crewed by Robyn and Bill Forbes, which had no tiller and the main sail blown out.

The daylight rescue which followed was one of the most dramatic undertaken.

“The dawn revealed a horrendous picture with seas running at about 10 metres, wind gusts of around 55 knots, gusting to 70 knots,” Commander Robbins said.

It was impossible to lower a boat and the Ramtha crew was told a line would be fired from Monowai to Ramtha for the crew to be hauled across the boiling seas in harnesses.

The plan was for Mr and Mrs Forbes to haul the harnesses across from Monowai, put them on and jump into the water.

Before that could happen, nature took control.

“A large roll by Monowai to starboard served to jerk them off their feet, along the deck and into the water,” said Larry Robbins in his report.

Mr and Mrs Forbes were hauled hand-over-hand, often under water, and finally lifted aboard Monowai to the cheers of the crew.

Monowai continued its mission and, at 8.34am on June 6, found the American yacht, Pilot, crewed by Barbara Parks and Greg Forbes.

This time the rescue was relatively easy as Monowai launched its rigid hulled inflatable boat.

Shortly before 4pm the same day, Monowai found its third storm victim, Mr O’Neil’s dismasted Silver Shadow.

Pain-racked, Mr O’Neil could not move from his bunk as his son, Murray, and his close friends, Richard Jackson and John McSherry, concentrated on keeping the bow of the four-skinned kauri yacht into the wind.

The Silver Shadow was still sound, but with insufficient fuel to reach Tonga the decision was made to abandon ship.

Ten years later as he prepared to have dinner with Mr Robbins, Mr O’Neil said Silver Shadow was first rolled by an enormous wave they heard coming.

It was one of those huge waves which injured Mr O’Neil as he stood in the galley preparing to make a coffee.

“I thought I had ruptured a lung because I could hardly breathe.” When Monowai’s inflatable boat arrived, he was literally thrown aboard and pushed into the bottom with a medic holding him down.

He has nothing but praise for Mr Robbins and the crew of Monowai.

The feats of Monowai’s crew were recognised annually until the ship was decommissioned in 1998 when Mr O’Neil sent the crew the finest bottle of rum he could find.

– NZPA