The Cruising Club of America has published a 63-page report on 28 cases in which one private yacht took the crew off another. The review, run with US Sailing and the Bermuda Race Foundation, came out on 20 October. It found no failed rescues and no deaths among the 28, and in 23 of them the boat in trouble was sinking. The report is full of useful detail for anyone who goes to sea and so may one day hear a Mayday.
The work began after the 2024 Newport Bermuda Race, when the J/Boats J/122 Alliance and the Sweden Yachts 41 Gunga Din sank and other yachts picked up both crews. The Gunga Din inquiry pointed out that Safety at Sea courses teach crews to board a life raft and stop there. William Strassberg, who chaired the group that prepared the report, said: "This report gives skippers and crews the lessons from 28 real rescues, so the first time they think through a yacht-to-yacht rescue isn't in the middle of one."
What do the 28 rescues have in common?
The team found 30 cases, 28 of them with enough detail. Eight began with a holed hull, seven with a broken rudder stock or bearing, and six with a failure of the keel structure. Four happened in coastal or near-offshore waters, where the boat was sinking too fast for shore-based rescue to be organised. Eighteen were in a race or rally, often with a competitor coming to help.
| How the crew crossed to the rescuing yacht | Cases |
|---|---|
| Life raft | 19 |
| In the water | 5 |
| Dinghy | 3 |
| Directly from boat to boat | 1 |
Five stages of a rescue and what the rescuing skipper should do
1. Contact, position and condition
Any boat that hears a distress call should log the name, call sign, MMSI, position, the problem, the number of people, their radios and raft, and the time. Unregistered EPIRBs and PLBs caused problems in some rescues. Get direct VHF contact between the two yachts as early as possible. As many rescue services put it, "Treat the first communications as if it may be the last".
When the Leopard 45 catamaran Karolina Viking flooded 300 miles west of Cape Verde during the ARC 2024 rally, the rescuers could not raise her on satellite phone or VHF. Her position reached the rescuers in a WhatsApp message sent over Starlink. The raft should hold a handheld VHF, an AIS beacon, a PLB and torches. At Silverrudder in September, a handheld VHF in a lifejacket pocket got a Mayday out for a sailor in the water.
The foreword is by Kirsten Neuschäfer, who in the 2022 Golden Globe Race sailed Minnehaha 100 miles to pick up Tapio Lehtinen after his Gaia 36 Asteria sank about 450 miles southeast of South Africa. She writes that he needed spare reading glasses in his grab bag and that daytime smoke flares would have helped her find him. Elsewhere in the report she adds: "It was an eye-opener as to how invisible flares (and even bright colours) are in the daylight, especially when the sun is low behind the item being searched for…"
2. Answering and preparing
Rescues went smoothly when both boats agreed on a plan before anyone moved. Desna's crew, who took off the sailors from Gunga Din, felt they were improvising "on the fly". Once the skipper of the sinking boat calls abandon ship, the rescuing skipper usually takes command on scene, and the other skipper still runs their own crew.
On the way, clear loose lines off the deck so they can't foul the propeller, tie down the boom, get lights ready and brief everyone. Tell the other crew to bring a handheld VHF, the grab bag, passports, glasses, medicines and the EPIRB.
3. Abandoning ship and the approach
The report calls the approach and transfer the most dangerous part, with risks of collision, a fouled propeller, an accidental gybe and injury. Coming alongside is a last resort because masts can tangle, and the authors advise against swimming across. A raft has ballast pockets and a drogue, drifts "surprisingly slowly" and can inflate upside down. Keep its painter attached until everyone is in.
Everything is harder at night, so wait for daylight if you can. If an EPIRB stays on the abandoned yacht, it must be registered to her and the authorities told, or another crew may set off to rescue an empty boat.
4. Getting people aboard
An open transom makes the climb from a raft easier. The raft's drogue can lie 30 metres to windward, so circle wide, and expect three or four approaches. Tie the raft on at once with a spare sheet or mooring line, because throw-bag lines are slippery, and winch it in. People climbing aboard will need a halyard or "many strong arms".
The Jongert 20DS Cinderella di Sanremo pulled Karolina Viking's raft alongside with a hydraulic winch. Her crew had searched for instructions first: "So, we looked it up on YouTube. Nothing. You can find a video on how to overhaul the cooling system on a '57 Studebaker, but there were no videos on how to pick up a life raft."
5. After the rescue
Check everyone for shock, hypothermia and injuries; emotional reactions may come later. Give the rescue centre the new crew list, ETA, supplies and the state of the abandoned boat, and let the families know.
The rescuing yacht is unlikely to carry a life raft big enough for both crews. Alliance hit an unknown object at 02.48, lost steering and began flooding. Her crew were in the raft at 03.40 and aboard Ceilidh by 04.06. Ceilidh kept racing with 16 people and a raft for 10 and finished about two days later, after three of the four bolts on her upper rudder bearing flange sheared.
The review team wants the subject added to US Sailing courses and to the training that races require. The skipper of Sparky, which took the crew of the wooden sloop Restive off their raft in the Gulf Stream in 2015, is quoted in the report: "When you do this kind of sailing, you know the cavalry isn't always coming. So, when you get the chance, you try to be the cavalry."
Photo: Cinderella di Sanremo / Yachting World. Source: Cruising Club of America yacht-to-yacht rescue report (October 2026), CCA press release.
