THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 20, 1996 TAG: 9604190065
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
HANGING ONTO A ROPE in the darkness, Buzz Radican of Virginia Beach was raised from his windswept yacht Seaweed to the deck of a Chinese container ship early Monday morning.
Once aboard, he gazed down at his unmanned 37-foot yacht, her mast swinging wildly - like an inverted pendulum - in the chop. Then, with sleep-weary eyes, he watched her slide astern, grow smaller, and slip out of sight.
The Seaweed was lost forever, disappearing in the shroud of darkness enveloping the Pacific, 870 nautical miles west of San Francisco.
And William ``Buzz'' Radican, 51, retired U.S. Navy captain, counted himself lucky.
For three, sleepless days he had battled high seas and stiff winds. His engine was dead, so the three electric bilge pumps aboard the craft were unusable. Then the mechanical pump aboard the vessel failed.
Exhausted, he was standing in water - bailing the vessel by hand - when rescued.
``I've been sailing boats since 1963,'' he said. ``And whenever I read accounts of small sailboats that were lost at sea when people were in bad situations, I always did Monday morning quarter-backing.''
He always thought he'd have found a way to return home without assistance, without abandoning the vessel.
Now, he knows better, he said.
Buzz concedes he probably owes his life to the crew of the 770-foot Chinese ship Gao He.
Fortune smiled on him. The vessel was one of the first test ships of the Chinese national fleet to participate in the U.S. Coast Guard's automated, mutual-assistance search and rescue system (AMVER) involving ships from 143 nations.
His disabled yacht, en route to San Diego from Honolulu, had been far outside shipping lanes.
``The Gao He was the only vessel within hundreds of miles of my position,'' Radican said.
The skipper was sailing the Seaweed alone when he hit rough weather about 10 days out of Honolulu. Winds of up to 40 knots and 25-foot seas. That's when his engine stopped working. That meant the batteries couldn't be recharged. He was slowly losing power for the radio and safety equipment.
After communicating with the U.S. Weather Service and the Coast Guard, he learned that more bad weather was headed his way.
``Looking at the weather that was coming I realized I was painting myself into a corner. . . ,'' he said. ``I didn't want to radio for help. I am a prideful man who doesn't like to admit failure. But I didn't know how long I'd have a useful radio and figured I had only a 50-50 chance of weathering the next storm.''
At 1400 hours on Monday he radioed the Coast Guard station at Point Reyes, Calif., telling of his emergency and giving his position.
The information was immediately relayed to the U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in Long Beach, Calif.
The rescue center in Long Beach was linked by computer to a refrigerator-sized mainframe in Martinsburg, W.Va., which tracks the voyages of 2,700 ships - in every ocean of the world - which are participating in the AMVER program. The ships inform the Coast Guard of their positions at least once every 48 hours.
Rather than send a Coast Guard plane - which could have dropped a raft and supplies but would have been unable to provide Buzz Radican shelter from the storm - the rescue center personnel decided to ask the Gao He for help.
When reached by radio, the Gao He - a ship owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company - was 150 miles away. It rescued Radican eight hours later.
At AMVER headquarters in New York, Rick Kenney, the civilian maritime relations officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, noted that if the Republic of China hadn't joined the program two years ago there would have been no way to know the ship was near Radican.
``Having just one new ship in the AMVER program increases the odds of finding a vessel in distress anywhere in the world,'' he said.
Buzz Radican had nothing but praise for his Chinese rescuers when he reached port in San Diego.
He said he'd taken a month to prepare the Seaweed for her voyage to San Diego and had spare parts for all the pumps - including the mechanical one - aboard.
Stuff happens, Buzz. ILLUSTRATION: [Color photo]
"BUZZ" RADICAN
by CNB