Cruisers Bounce Back

When a sailor becomes overdue in making landfall or regular radio contact, more often than not it turns out that there’s a simple explanation such as lack of wind or charging problems. Nevertheless, we always take such situations seriously.

A case in point occurred five years ago when Minnesota-based sailor Anne Symington called to alert us that her husband Russ hadn’t checked in for two weeks — an abnormally long time for him. At last contact he was due to singlehand the couple’s Island Spirit 40 cat Mohini from the Hiva Oa island in the Marquesas to Apataki, in the Tuamotus, a voyage of roughly 500 miles.

We helped her get the word out to several boats whose crews knew Russ well. Soon after, reports from several boats confirmed they’d seen him recently, but that he did not look well, was sleeping during the day, and had not made a previously arranged rendezvous. Russ did not respond to calls on local nets in the Marquesas. 

A couple of weeks later, though, the cat was spotted in the Tuamotus. By that point, Latitude 38 had put out a ‘health and welfare’ notice to the entire Pacific Puddle Jump fleet requesting they keep a lookout for Mohini, and Tahitian yacht agent Cindy Dietrich (of CMA-CGM) had alerted her island contacts. Back home in the US, Anne was still puzzled and deeply concerned about what was up with her husband. On May 18, following a visit from the local gendarmes (requested by Cindy), Russ finally called Anne from Rangiroa. "He was completely confused, unable to clearly say where he is; unable to complete sentences," she told us. It was his first direct contact with her in 27 days. 

Anne flew out to Tahiti a couple of days later, by which time the gendarmes had taken Russ to see a doctor who initially surmised that he’d had a stroke. But after many more tests in Papeete, doctors concluded that he probably had a brain tumor. Anne rushed him back to the States for probable surgery, leaving the boat in the hands of cruising friends. Further testing in San Diego concluded that it had been a stroke after all, which led to bleeding in the brain. 

At that point we figured that Russ’ sailing days were probably over. Thankfully, we were wrong. While we were hosting a Puddle Jump event in Panama last month, Russ and Anne turned up to say hello. They were both looking fit and healthy and were back cruising on Mohini again, about to pass through the Canal en route to the Caribbean. And Russ’ hard work doing speech therapy had him talking normally again. We like to think that living the active cruiser lifestyle helped Russ achieve a nearly complete recovery, and we wish both him and Anne the best of luck wherever the wind blows them next.