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There is something reassuring about a calm sea.
There is something reassuring about a calm sea.
No whitecaps.
No strong wind.
No spray hitting the windshield.
No violent movement beneath the hull.
The boat feels stable. The passengers relax. Conversations become easier. The skipper may feel that the difficult part of the day is behind him.
And that is precisely where an interesting question begins:
Does a calm sea actually mean a low-risk situation?
On 2 October 2022, a recreational powerboat in the British Virgin Islands provided a devastating answer.
The sea was flat calm.
The wind was light.
Visibility was good.
The air temperature was 29°C and the sea was 27°C.
It was dark, but there was moonlight.
Nothing about the environmental conditions suggested an obviously dangerous night.
Yet within minutes, a 37-foot offshore powerboat named Awesome would lose steering control at high speed, violently roll, eject ten of its eleven occupants and sink.
Two people would not survive.
This is not a story about a storm.
It is a story about something much more difficult to recognise:
danger that does not look dangerous.
Earlier that day, Awesome had been used for a family outing.
The 37-foot, 11.3-metre offshore powerboat had been taken to White Bay on Jost Van Dyke, where family and friends spent the afternoon eating, swimming and celebrating a child’s ninth birthday.
As sunset approached, the boats prepared to return to East End.
The conditions were still benign.
There was no obvious weather threat waiting on the horizon.
But there had already been a warning.
As Awesome and another boat left the beach, the engines began overheating. The owner investigated and found that both engine water strainers were clogged with sand. The engines were shut down, the strainers cleaned, and the cooling water began flowing again.
The engines were restarted.
The problem appeared to be solved.
And the journey continued.
That sequence is worth remembering.
A problem appeared.
It was dealt with.
The system worked again.
So the journey continued.
There is nothing extraordinary about that decision.
It is the kind of sequence that can happen on recreational boats every weekend.
But a boat is not simply a machine that is either working or broken.
Something can be working now and still contain a problem that has been developing for months.
Awesome had twin supercharged V8 engines, each with a claimed maximum output of 1,000 horsepower.
The engines drove Mercury Racing stern drives through universally jointed drive shafts.
After the accident, investigators examined the failed components.
They found evidence of overheating, corrosion, overloading and inadequate lubrication in the universal joints.
The investigation concluded that a lack of lubrication had caused a bearing to seize. That produced heavy wear over a prolonged period. Eventually, the weakened component could no longer transmit the torque being applied to it.
Then it failed.
Suddenly.
This distinction is important.
The failure was sudden.
The problem was not.
The mechanical condition that eventually produced the failure had been developing for a long time.
That is one of the most uncomfortable truths about marine accidents:
The moment an accident happens is often not the moment the accident begins.
At about 19:03, Awesome entered the passage between Little Thatch Island and Frenchman’s Cay.
Witness evidence and expert analysis indicated that the boat was travelling at around 60 mph.
Then the port drive-shaft universal joint failed.
The damaged shaft severed a hydraulic hose supplying the steering system.
Hydraulic pressure was lost.
The stern drives moved rapidly to full starboard lock.
At approximately 60 mph (52 knots), Awesome made a violent turn.
The hull moved laterally.
It suddenly regained its grip on the water.
The boat tripped violently to port.
Ten of the eleven people aboard were ejected.
The boat then reared almost vertically, bow in the air, before falling back into the water and beginning to sink.
There was no storm.
No breaking wave.
No dramatic weather system.
Just a calm night and a mechanical failure occurring at a speed at which there was almost no time to react.
This is where the story becomes bigger than Awesome.
A calm sea removes some risks.
It does not remove risk itself.
A flat sea does not tell you that:
The sea can be perfectly calm while the situation inside the boat is anything but.
And this is one of the dangerous psychological effects of benign conditions:
we tend to judge risk by what we can immediately see.
If the sea is rough, we become cautious.
If the sky is dark with weather approaching, we pay attention.
If the boat is rolling heavily, we know something is wrong.
But when everything looks normal, our brains naturally become more comfortable.
Comfort is useful.
Complacency is not.
The most dangerous word on a boat may sometimes be:
“Normal.”
The engine sounds normal.
The sea looks normal.
The weather is normal.
The trip is going normally.
So we stop asking questions.
But experienced seamanship is not about constantly expecting disaster.
It is about remaining sensitive to change.
A different vibration.
A new sound.
A change in engine temperature.
An unusual steering response.
A passenger behaving differently.
A component that has not been maintained according to its requirements.
None of these things automatically means that disaster is coming.
But each one is information.
And good skippers learn to respect information before it becomes an emergency.
There is another uncomfortable lesson in the Awesome case.
The owner was an experienced leisure boater who had operated boats in the BVI for many years. He also had experience working with engines and carried out much of the boat’s maintenance himself.
But he had no formal boating qualifications and had not undertaken formal maritime navigation or safety training.
This does not make experience worthless.
Quite the opposite.
Experience is one of the most valuable assets a skipper can have.
But experience has a limitation:
Experience tells you what you have seen before. It does not guarantee that you will recognise what you have never seen.
The universal joints on Awesome showed no evidence of regular greasing when examined after the accident. The investigation concluded that the lack of lubrication had contributed to the eventual failure.
A skipper can have years of experience.
A boat can be familiar.
A system can appear reliable.
And a component that nobody is thinking about can still be quietly deteriorating.
There is another detail from the accident that deserves attention.
Awesome carried PFDs.
They were found inside the forward cabin after the wreck was recovered.
The boat also had engine kill switches and kill cords.
But the PFDs were not being worn.
The kill cords were still in place and had been tied back rather than being used as intended.
This is another form of the same illusion.
Having a safety system is not the same as using it.
A lifejacket inside a locker is equipment.
A lifejacket being worn is protection.
A kill cord installed on a boat is equipment.
A kill cord correctly attached to the operator is a safety system.
The difference only becomes obvious when something goes wrong.
A good skipper does not spend every calm day waiting for something terrible to happen.
That would not be seamanship.
Instead, a good skipper keeps asking small questions.
What has changed?
What am I relying on?
What have I not checked?
What would happen if this system failed right now?
How much time would I have to react?
These questions are not signs of fear.
They are signs of preparedness.
And perhaps the most important question is:
If the sea is calm, have I simply become less alert?
There is a simple mental exercise I like to call the Calm Sea Test.
When everything looks easy, pause for a moment.
Look beyond the surface.
Look at the boat.
Look at the machinery.
Look at the people.
Look at the environment.
And ask yourself:
What could fail even though everything looks fine?
You don’t need to predict the accident.
You don’t need to imagine every possible catastrophe.
You simply need to remain curious about the things you cannot see.
Because the absence of an obvious warning is not proof that there is no risk.
The story of Awesome is not a lesson about being afraid of calm seas.
It is a lesson about respecting the difference between comfortable conditions and safe conditions.
They are not always the same thing.
The sea was calm that night.
The weather was benign.
Visibility was good.
And yet the boat was carrying a hidden mechanical vulnerability that, combined with high speed and the sudden loss of steering control, left almost no time to respond.
The danger was not visible on the surface.
It was inside the system.
And that is perhaps the most dangerous kind of risk:
the risk we stop looking for because everything around us feels normal.
A good skipper does not become vigilant when the sea becomes dangerous.
A good skipper remains vigilant so the sea does not have to become dangerous first.
Calm seas are a gift.
Enjoy them.
Relax.
Let your passengers enjoy the day.
But never confuse comfort with control.
Because the sea does not always announce the lesson with a storm.
Sometimes it whispers.
And the question is whether we are still listening.
The sea always gives the lesson.
The question is whether we are willing to learn it.
