Sailors fight for 90 mins to stay alive after boat sinks in Lake Michigan: 'You feel very alone'
Red Herring crew gets hypothermia while awaiting rescue
Sailing across Lake Michigan at night, they all heard the big bang.
And they knew it was bad.
“The boat spun out. We knew we lost steering immediately,” said Magnus Clarke, 56, an architect from Toronto, Canada. “When a big piece of carbon breaks in half under a heavy (wind) load, it resonates through the entire boat. You can feel it shake under your feet.”
Skipper Fred Eaton, 63, a private investor from Toronto, said, “Magnus, the rudder’s gone. It’s sticking out the side of the boat.”
Five sailors on Red Herring, a 55-foot Custom Canting Keel Ketch vessel, were headed to the Windy City to deliver the boat for a race on Saturday, July 19 from Chicago to Mackinac Island.
But the rudder snapped, and water poured into the vessel.
Within 20 minutes or so, they decided to abandon ship to survive.
They worried about getting tangled in wires and rigging, Clarke said. “The breeze was approximately 35 knots with 8 foot waves. We had to jump into the water in our life jackets.”
The crew watched Red Herring sink while they waited and hoped for rescue
Clarke and his wife Heather Kosa, 44, an office manager and competitive sailor, held onto each other while the waves pushed the others in a different direction. Eaton stayed close to his son William, 17, and Rob Battye, 52, a hotelier from Ellicotville, New York.
No other boats were in sight.
The sailors floated in the cold water for some 90 minutes in pitch black darkness.
This is the story of the rescue — what led up to the incident, how sailors survived and what followed — as told exclusively to Shifting Gears:
The night before the sinking, Red Herring pulled into Harbor Springs, Mich., to do “a minor repair on the keel.”
They set sail around 9 a.m. Wednesday to continue the trip to Chicago.
“We knew weather was coming,” Clarke said. “We felt we were well equipped.”
One of the unique features of the boat with its two masts was having different gears to select how hard to push the boat. The crew had shortened the sail and was cruising along “gently, at a moderate pace” and in control.
But the wind was building and building and building, Clarke said.
“We were running downwind with just a jib and a reefed Mizzen, the little sail at the back,” he said. “We were surfing the waves when, just before 9 p.m. or so Michigan time, when the rudder broke. We believe it was the rudder post … It created a pretty good-sized hole in bottom of the boat, which immediately started to leak. We realized pretty quickly this was probably a terminal condition for us, for the boat.”
Red Herring issued a mayday call.
They also alerted their team in Chicago that was awaiting arrival of the boat.
Having Starlink internet connection on the boat allowed for crew to communicate by cell phone and text, sending images of coordinates and reaching people who may not have had access to marine equipment.
Shore crew waiting for Red Herring raced to the Chicago Yacht Club on Wednesday night to help coordinate the rescue.
“At the same time, we were in intermittent communication with the Coast Guard by VHF (marine radio). At the time, we were approximately 15 nautical miles east of Kewaunee, Wisconsin,” Clarke said. “The crew was working at bailing out the boat with water coming in.”
Red Herring had on board an emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB), which is used in emergencies to locate boaters in distress. The device is registered to the boat so authorities know the size and description of the vessel involved.
In addition, Red Herring had an automatic identification system (AIS) that transmitted the sailboat’s position to other boats.
“No one was within 12 miles,” Clarke said. “We had been traveling with a pack of boats (from Mackinac Island) but diverged. It was a favorable angle for us to sail with the waves, safer.”
Still, powerful wind snapped the equipment.
When the sailors jumped into the water, their life jackets included technology that transmitted their GPS location, also registered to the boat.
“We got off the boat so it didn’t take us down,” Clark said. “Enormous waves were breaking over our heads. We had strobe lights on us.”
“We had to focus on not drowning.”
Staying together wasn’t easy.
“When you're in your fully-inflated life jacket, it’s very difficult to swim,” Clarke said. “We, at first, made an attempt while the others drifted in a different direction. We had to conserve our energy. We didn’t know how long we’d be in the water and we needed to try and remain calm, focus on our breathing. We had to focus on not drowning. Big waves kept breaking over our heads constantly.”
Clarke and Kosa saw lights in the distance. They had a ditch bag with emergency supplies, and Kosa shined a search light into the sky. Clarke managed to shoot off a parachute flare.
“Maybe 3 or 4 minutes later, a Coast Guard vessel pulled alongside us,” Clarke said.
“Their Coast Guard crew pulled us on board. They got us down below and did a check on us. Approximately 5- to 10 minutes later, they managed to pick up and rescue the other three sailors, pull them on board, check them all out and get them down below safely.”
The group of three had seen a helicopter do two flyovers.
“Heather and I never saw the helicopter,” Clarke said. “After the stress of the whole situation, and drinking half of Lake Michigan, a bunch of us were barfing our guts out. Some of the Coast Guard people were barfing their guts out, too, probably from seeing us. It was really rough out there.”
After another two hours or so getting back to shore on the Coast Guard vessel, the Red Herring crew ended up at a motel in Keewanee late Wednesday. They had been checked by an ambulance crew, which confirmed mild hypothermia.
Crew was together resting and processing it all on Thursday afternoon.
“We thank our lucky stars things went perfectly,” Clarke said.
Waiting for a ride to Chicago to meet up with their shore crew, the group planned to shop for clothes, since all their possessions were now at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Three of the five crew members also needed to get to the consulate and arrange for new passports.
US Coast Guard: Preparation saved lives
Fred Eaton, a 2010 Rolex Canadian Sailor of the Year, was just one of the skilled sailors on board, Clarke said. The team has taken offshore safety courses and focused on efficient communication.
“When Fred was brought aboard, he asked the Coast Guard, ‘How’d it go?’ They said, ‘What you guys did was perfect,’” Clarke said. “They didn’t have to run a grid search. They had the coordinates. We all had transponders on. We were wearing a harness with an inflatable life vest that inflates when it’s fully immersed in water.”
Their gear was high visibility green, which helps.
“Having communication coordinated by a shore crew was absolutely critical,” Clarke said. “We're eternally grateful to the Coast Guard. It did an absolutely fantastic job, really professional. We're very thankful.”
Clarke and the others ended up at their hotel at maybe 1:30 a.m. Thursday but they’re not sure because there’s a time zone change on the hellish trip.
Incredibly, Kosa is the only member of the crew that isn’t registered to race in Chicago. She agreed to deliver the boat with her husband so they could spend time together and support her husband.
In the end, that’s what she did in ways she never could have imagined.
“We had no guarantee that things would evolve quickly,” Clarke said. “As soon as we stopped swimming, we focused on our breathing. It can be very easy to panic and hyperventilate. If you do that, you run out of energy very quickly and you’re more likely to drown yourselves. We had to settle in for the long run. We had to keep each other calm and pace ourselves.”
The U.S. Coast Guard put out a statement on Thursday about saving five lives.
Heather Kosa is heartbroken she lost her wedding rings during the incident.
She removed them to pull lines during the rough weather, which is commonly done.
“It’s too easy for something to get caught. You can lose a finger,” she told Shifting Gears on Thursday. “I had taken off the rings and put them below in a little box for safekeeping. At the time, when the rudder came off, I had a moment where I considered whether I should go down below and retrieve my rings and my passport. I thought it might not be the best thing to do when the boat is sinking. It made me think about being on a plane when they say, ‘In case of crash, do not go back for your belongings.’”
On July 14, Red Herring finished racing from Port Huron to Mackinac and placed second in class and sixth overall in the Cove Island course. They raced 35 hours, 42 minutes and 39 seconds.
Meanwhile, other boats sailing to Chicago listened to the distress calls on the radio involving Red Herring.
Bill Baisden of St. Clair Shores, Mich., owner of Angry Cupcake, a Corsair 31, said on Facebook on Thursday that he pulled out of the 2025 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac presented by Wintrust. “We experienced the fight in Lake Michigan,” Baisden wrote on the Lake St. Clair Sailors page, “and unfortunately she put an ass whooping on us as we had to withdraw from CYCtoMac race with equipment failure; all safe and boat getting ready to head home on her trailer.”
Mark DenUyl of Marysville, owner of Good Lookin,’ a J/105 that won first in class in the Bayview Mackinac Race on Monday, also was battling wind and waves en route to Chicago when he heard distress calls involving Red Herring. Crew member Brennan Churchill of Kimball Township, Mich., texted to a team thread, “They were about 30 miles behind us when they read out the coordinates.”
Tim Prophit, owner of Fast Tango, a North American 40, texted Shifting Gears on Thursday, “We had a full knockdown last night. The prop(eller) was out of the water but we were able to recover … Everybody’s safe but the boat is a mess so we have a lot of work to do in order to race. Wild night on Lake Michigan.”
Phoebe Wall Howard covered sailing for The Detroit Free Press for seven years, until 2024. Find her recent sailing stories here.
More: Miracle rescue after storm tosses sailor overboard during 101st Bayview Mackinac Race
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Thanks for another great article. So glad everyone is safe.
Not to make light if the situation but this part reminds me of that scene in "Stand By Me": "a bunch of us were barfing our guts out. Some of the Coast Guard people were barfing their guts out, too, probably from seeing us"