Her vitals flat-lined, eyes glossed over

When the 54-foot catamaran Magic Bus sank while making its seasonal shift from Connecticut to the Bahamas, heroic efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy rescued the five person crew. Owned by marine industry veteran Brandon Flack, his son Dylan was among the crew and shares the experience with the WaveTrain blog:

There’s something beautiful about steering a ship that knows she’s going under. The helm felt lifeless. The two throttles rested gently in neutral, both engines by now submerged. The water was creeping further up the aft transom scoops with each passing wave, promising to soon deliver a knock-out punch.

I first set foot on this boat, Magic Bus, as a 15-year-old kid. In the five years since, she had showed me what it means to be an adult. I’d learned more about myself crawling around her bilges than I had at school. The endless work of maintaining a large catamaran provides lots of opportunities for learning.

The people this boat had hosted and the collective memories we forged aboard her had become an integral part of my identity. Now I stood at her helm 280 miles off the coast of North Carolina helplessly watching my old friend founder in the North Atlantic. I gently patted her wheel as her vitals flat-lined and her eyes glossed over. – Full report