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The Preventer Mistake That Killed Two Sailors
December 22, 2025 · 15 min · 472K views
Sailboat at hull speed downwind under black sails
What this video covers
James Evenson, who anchored alongside Carl and Anne-Marie in Bermuda before their fatal June 2022 passage, reconstructs the loss of SV Escape — a CNB 66 — and extracts seven seamanship lessons from the disaster.▶ 0:25 Carl and Anne-Marie departed St. George's, Bermuda, bound for Nova Scotia with two experienced crew.▶ 1:12 Conditions deteriorated on the second night while crossing the Gulf Stream: wind built from the high teens into the mid-30s with gusts into the mid-40s, and wind-against-current stacked steep, short-period seas.▶ 2:10 To take a second reef, the crew turned head-to-wind — required by the CNB 66's in-boom electric furling system — and lost control of the boom in the violent motion.▶ 3:00 The mainsheet snapped taut and struck Anne-Marie; the boom swung back and compound-fractured Carl's leg; shock loading ripped the mainsheet fitting from the deck.▶ 3:55 Rescue swimmers dropped from a helicopter in darkness recovered both, but neither survived.▶ 5:30 The seven lessons: reef at sunset before conditions force it; sail at 80% capacity to preserve margin; treat wind-against-current zones like the Gulf Stream as categorically more dangerous than forecast; reef off the wind rather than head-to-wind whenever possible; distribute situational awareness and reefing procedures across the whole crew; match boat size to what the crew can actually manage in degraded conditions; and treat the first 72 hours of any passage as the highest-risk period.▶ 5:50 Evenson also references PredictWind for crew weather access and John Harries of Attainable Adventure Cruising for off-the-wind reefing technique.▶ 9:14
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