On a sail and a prayer

Collins bought a Fisher 37 last May in Beaufort, North Carolina, and is sailing it home to St. John’s, Newfoundland. “It’s a nice little boat, a North Sea boat,” said Dunphy. Collins was a great talker… a great source of information. He just carried on in the old Newfoundland- Irish tradition.”

Collins and his 21-year old nephew, Jonathan, were sailing from Cape Cod to Yarmouth when tropical storm Cristobal brushed by their course on July 21.

Collins says he didn’t even dare look out the hatch during the worst of the weather in the two-day sail. “The wind was blowing so hard, it blew the thoughts right out of me head,” he said. “It was 43 hours of misery.” “I tied everything down. I couldn’t go out there. I didn’t even want to look out there to tell you the truth. I just kept going on the nav (plotting navigation).”

The weather was clear on the day of their departure, but that night, the weather began to turn a little “wiggly” as Collins described.

Swells and squalls began chopping up the ocean. “We were skating along at eight and a half knots and this boat is over 30,000 pounds,” said Collins. “We were moving. I was just idling the engines, motor-sailing. The wind was on our nose. We must have been in 20-foot seas, easy. It was too stormy to go up and get the main down. There was just no let up. The autopilot couldn’t keep up with it,” he said.

The storm snapped all the cam cleats and Collins lost the wiper on his starboard windshield.

The wind was mostly southwest but the seas were almost in every direction,” said Collins, who used to work worldwide on oilrigs. “We were off course a fair bit, ‘cause you don’t want to be side-on to one of those big swells. It was a long haul,” he said.

The sailors arrived in Yarmouth at 5 a.m., exhausted. Collins says he had to laugh when customs officials asked if he had guns aboard. “I said wah? I mean, the police only got guns in Newfoundland a few years ago.”

Other adventures he’s experienced in his voyage include seeing humpback whales as he left Cape Cod. “There was one beside the boat and I looked ahead and there was a school of them. They were coming out of the water like missiles. Oh my. I said to Jonathan, take out the survival suits. If they hit us we’re gonna be in a dozen pieces. And of course, he’s saying, ‘you should chill out and take it easy’.”

Collins lyrical Newfoundland accent and frequent jokes made light of the experience but his respect for ‘Seacue’ after the storm was obvious. “This boat is the one for Newfoundland,” he said. “It’s the only boat that’s good for the northern latitudes. When we came through that weather, it sold me right away.”

He’s also proud of his young nephew. “He did very well. I was impressed with him. Jonathan never did a trip like this before. He had never even tied a knot. We were just two transient Newfies winging it on a prayer.”

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