 |
 |
Between the Lines |
 |
|
Interview with Jim Carrier |
|
The Ship and the Storm
Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome
Jim Carrier
Despite predictions, Tropical Storm Mitch whirled to life to become the worst nightmare of Captain Guyan March of the Windjammer Barefoot Cruise schooner Fantome: a category five storm with 180-mile-per-hour winds and fifty-foot seas. Cornered with eerie precision by this unpredictable and erratic natural wonder, the Fantome discharged its passengers and made a run out to sea...straight toward the eye of the hurricane.
|
|
Biography |
|
Jim Carrier is an award-winning journalist and author of seven books. He has written for National Geographic, SAIL, and the New York Times. After twenty years as a radio newscaster, Associated Press correspondent and newspaper editor, including thirteen years at the Denver Post's "Rocky Mountain Ranger," he bought a thirty-five foot sailboat and moved aboard. Carrier is a survivor of six hurricanes, including Luis, Marilyn, Georges, and Mitch. He is currently on a transatlantic sailing trip.
Jim Carrier is also a firm supporter of social "tolerance."
Please visit www.tolerance.org for more information.
Also see - Interview with Jim Carrier for A Traveler's Guide to the Civil Rights Movement
|
|
Interview |
|
Q: The research you put into this book was obviously intensive. As a sailor, did you find any particular surprises in your research—perhaps at the hurricane research center?
A: The thing that was eye-opening to me as a sailor was the degree to which the National Hurricane Center is wrong. When we watch these guys doing their forecasting, and they show us on a map where a storm is going to go, we have a sense that it's like a road and that this is the track of the storm and that it is going to go there. What I found is that when they are wrong, they admit they are wrong. They are the first people to say that they have an error rate; and they also write down their error rates in the forecasts so a person can tell how confident they are in the prediction.
From a personal standpoint I can tell you that I was anchored in Key West when the remnants of Mitch's tropical storm came through, which was just a month prior to when Hurricane Georges came through, and although I was physically on shore, I stayed in Key West with my boat. After doing this research I now think it would be completely foolish to stay with a sailboat, in a place like Key West or an island area, if a hurricane were anywhere nearby. This is because the predictions can be off by fourty-fifty-sixty degrees and can be off, on a matter of intensity, by one or two levels. That can make a world of difference in terms of safety. I'd say that I learned a great deal of respect and have great admiration for these guys because the forecasting has improved dramatically from an error rate of something like 300 miles a day down to less than 100—I think at the time of Mitch it was about eighty-eight miles. Even so, if you are in the path of a storm, an eighty-eight mile distance is a tremendous difference in terms of where a storm might strike—where the front of it might come from, where the winds might be the strongest, where the storm might actually hit.
In the case of Mitch, they were wildly wrong on the direction of the storm, and it ended up taking a very sharp left turn and coming down into Honduras. For this young captain, Guyan March, and the Windjammer company who were trying to make a decision about what to do with the boat, it really made a difference because they relied on that forecast being accurate. They did not take into account the possible error. If they had done so earlier and said, "Ok, here's the arc in which this storm might go, are we going to be in that arc of possible error," they might have made a different decision.
Q: Do you think then, that the decision they made was wrong? Or was it a case of a decision becoming wrong based on the unpredictability of the weather?
A: It was a combination of things. In tragedies like these there is a chain of decisions—one leads to another that leads to another that leads to another. Looking back I would say, with the clarity of hindsight and being alive which I hesitate to do in a situation like this, that it is a mystery to me why they tried to preserve the cruise that week rather than canceling it and taking everybody off the boat. It would have given March another whole day or two to do something different. He wouldn't have had to worry about taking the passengers to an airport, which complicated his life enormously. Having to spend a day taking the passengers up to Belize, with the hurricane coming right at him just made things worse.
I think it was the pressure—it was never stated and those involved would deny it if asked or if one claimed it—but March's decision early on, when the storm started to bend toward the Honduran Bay Island's area coastline, was to announce to the passengers that they were going to stay in the Bay Islands and continue the cruise rather than go on to Belize. Well, the forecast at the time was clearly and flatly against that decision because the Bay Islands were already forecast to have twelve-foot seas on the day he decided to continue the cruise. When March and the company then realized the boat was going to be trapped where anchored, they looked at options and thought about canceling the cruise. But I think the captain couldn't stand the thought of telling these 100 people that they were going to have to get back in the wet boats and go back to shore to a mudflat village and get on buses and spend a miserable night getting to a hotel. At that point, going to Belize was, for the passengers, the best possible opportunity—but it reduced March's options tremendously.
Q: The Ship and the Storm addresses intense feelings and emotions, along with the natural forces of a horrific storm, and yet you told the story in a matter-of-fact tone. This objective third-eye view actually seems to increase the threat of the storm and bring the reader more readily to the edge of the chair when they are reading it. Did you do this on purpose to intensify the tone or is this your standard writing style for researched materials?
A: I've been a journalist for thirty-five years and I think when you start out writing you do what my agent calls being "writerly"—you focus on words and phrases, and you focus on shaping the sentence as opposed to concentrating on what the sentence is trying to say. Over the years, my writing has become simpler to the point where my goal now is to tell the story straightforwardly. Of course there is also a lot of strategy when you are writing a story or a book—the approach and how to build the suspense without using hyperbole. One of the editors on the book kept wanting to hear the "hissing of the seas," but I thought it would drive the reader nuts if I kept talking about the "hissing" because there are only so many words you can use to try to build tumult. So I purposely relied on verbs and nouns and clear descriptions that would provide a picture to the reader of what the people in the story were hearing and feeling and possibly thinking while this was going on. In the case of The Ship and the Storm, there was no need to hype the story. You know the ending is tragic, and in many ways those types of descriptive words would fail to describe what it would be like to be in the middle of this storm. So I believe the proper tact was to let people describe it. One of the finest memories I have of the power of this tactic was of a couple who lay on the ground during the hurricane, about ten miles from where the boat disappeared, on the island of Guanaja. The man remembered looking out at a mangrove, which is a very hearty, wiry, almost indestructible type of plant-like an oak-and watching the wind wear it down to a root. I thought that was a wonderful description.
You can't say, "the wind howled and shrieked," or "the shrieking of the rigging," because once you've said that, you can't say it again. So you have to find other ways, and you have to try to find words that will have some meaning to someone who has never been on a ship or been at sea. So in this way I did purposely set up the tone. Also, the book opens on a calm, balmy day with ripples on the water; I purposely did set this scene—without consciously saying it and without coming back to it—to remind people that what was once a ripple is now a fifty-foot wave. Subconsciously the reader understands that the trip starts calm, the water rises, the wind gets stronger, and the sea is suddenly a killer. It's detail without hype. You try to find the right word without "howling."
Q: You also alternated the tension between the fear of the people who are accidentally caught in the storm and the pure excitement of the hurricane researchers who are essentially embracing the storm. You've been in six hurricanes yourself, including partially in the throes of the Mitch hurricane. Do you get that simultaneous feeling of excitement and fear? Or is it one or the other?
A: It depends on the situation. Having been in the path of hurricanes, I know there can be almost a party atmosphere-if you're safe. If you are on the ground in a hotel or a bar, hurricane parties are not unknown. It's not good to be drinking at that time but it's a very common occurrence. A hurricane changes the reality of a place—it changes the routine. People leave. Stores shut down. There's nothing to do but sit around and wait. We drank wine at a guy's fortress—like house during Hurricane Georges—listening to the "hissing" of the palms outside and looking out once in a while. We felt as safe as can be. But if you are out on a boat or actually being battered by it, it is an entirely different scene. At the National Hurricane Center the people don't even know the wind is blowing. Their facility was virtually destroyed by Hurricane Andrew and they rebuilt a brand new bunker-like place further inland. They are somewhat isolated from the storms and monitor everything by instrument, and so there is an interior calm while the storm is raging outside in the middle of other people's lives. I do think that, until they realize that people are dying out there, it is rather exciting for them to try to get inside the "mind [of the storm]," if you will, and what the storm is doing, and give an accurate prediction. They are all very smart and dedicated to saving lives and they get into "it" like a professional does.
Q: And yet some of those "professionals" get into the plane and fly into the eye of the hurricane.
A: They do. They love it. They are fearful in some ways but they feel they are out there on the edge of doing great work and they are a combination of brainy professionals and daredevils. They are wonderfully bright guys and they truly, seriously are trying to understand these storms. There is so much they don't yet know. They have made great strides-during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 they learned a lot about how a hurricane works because it actually struck them. Now there's a good example. Here were guys who were safe inside and predicting a storm in a scientific calm way, and meanwhile their families were ten miles away huddling in their homes, fearful. It was an eye-opener for many of them to see the contrast.
Q: How about you Jim? Would you rather sail into the hurricane, or would you rather fly into it?
A: I really don't have a desire to do either. I could have gone with the hurricane hunters in the later season—you can always arrange press trips for those types of adventures—but it's kind of brutal and I don't think you get a sense of the whole while inside of it. I would not in my life want to be out at sea going through the eye of a hurricane, especially in a storm of this magnitude. And, I would say at this point—knowing what I do now from researching the book—that I would not even be in the Caribbean during the hurricane season unless I could get out—and on a sailboat you cannot get out very fast. I would certainly get off the boat.
Q: There's another interesting aspect to this book. You weaved a series of descriptions about these omen-type dreams that the families of those in danger had experienced—dreams of going into deep water—dreams of dying—dreams of imminent threat. How do you account for these premonition-type reactions and why did you decide to include these in the book?
A: I included the dreams because they were so common. They kept coming up and coming up in these interviews. I felt it was part of these women's memory of the story and loss, and there were too many of them to be ignored. I have no idea why it happens but it is an ancient phenomena; the idea that somehow a spirit cries out from the other side is so well recorded or accepted. These women had no reason to lie to me and they were scattered, separated by thousands of miles and having these similar, phenomenal, interesting, detailed dreams and visions that were eerily accurate as to what actually happened. It was part of their experience. I feel that if a woman wakes up and feels that her husband is drowning, and in fact he is drowning, that's part of the story. It was striking to me.
I've spent a fair amount of time with Native Americans, and they have certain belief systems and visions, and the only way I can describe the phenomena is to say there are people who see things and feel things with a wider spectrum—almost as if they have a better antenna. I also have friends who can see aura colors around a person and I can't explain that. I can't see it. But I'm not going to deny that the person looks at me and might see that I'm in a blue mood or some other mood. Who's to deny the reality for these women that these voices and visions came to them? I also think that it is part of the whole human story of the person left behind who has as the last memory, being awakened in the night by a dream. There is a sense of finality and, with never knowing what happened and never having a body to mourn over, all they have to cling to is that someone came to them and said "good-bye" or told them what happened. Here I am trying to tell a story of what happened on the boat, when no one knows, and I found it extremely fascinating that the descriptions of these voices and visions were as accurate as any naval architect could be in terms of speculation. It is a phenomenon that couldn't be skipped in the story because it was in too great of detail and omnipresent. These stories, as I subsequently learned, are very common in sea history. And the people involved are not any more spiritual or primitive in any way—for example, the woman who had these dreams in Austria is a Ph.D. economist. It's very touching.
It is hard to listen to these stories and to get people to tell you these stories. It was awful to go and talk about these events-it is what I do as a storyteller and it is important to be able to tell the story, but to get someone who is reluctant to talk about tragedy, and then to draw it out of them, is draining. You drain yourself and them. I had a scene toward the end where I drew out the story, and the family's memories were scattered about the room with all the knick-knacks that were brought home as gifts, and it was very tough. I went to Guyana on the first anniversary of the sinking and the news of the anniversary was on TV, people were uptight, and it was very difficult to get these women to sit down, describe these memories, and tell the stories about the good days. And then tell the other memories and the dreams. It's very tough work but also important. One of the many tasks I wanted to do in this book was to pay homage to the men who died, and you can do that only by bringing them alive first.
|
|
|
