The following account was written by veteran cruiser Sheldon Stuchell based on reports from the two crew aboard the cruising boat Escape and official Coast Guard reports. While the incident and the loss of the skipper and his wife, Germans Karl and Annemarie Frank, are alarming, we bring you this report not to be sensational but because the detail that Sheldon is able to provide shows just how a situation at sea can go from normal to a tragedy in a split second, even to experienced sailors who were doing everything in a seamanlike fashion. At the end of this story, we will posit some thoughts, but we will not second guess the skipper and his wife; they were experienced sailors who knew what they were doing. GD
This is the personal accounting of the tragedy on S/V Escape by the crew.
On the 2nd of May, 2022, the owners of S/V Escape posted on a crew service web-site, looking for crew to sail with them from Bermuda to Halifax. The responding crew (1 USCG licensed captain; 1 with over fifteen years of sailing experience) had met Annemarie and Karl the year before at a boat show and responded as interested in being crew. Read More
