"mmc" wrote in message
ng.com...
http://www.sail- world.com/ USA/Mystery- sinking-of- tall-ship-
Concordia, -64-rescued- from-lifeboats/ 66633

Tall Ship Concordia sinks off the coast of Brazil, well trained crew made
the difference between tragedy and just a financial loss.

Never heard of a microburst sinking a vessel or even on the open sea but
it does make sense.

Two ships that I happen to know of:

Pride of Baltimore, a replica of a 19th century Baltimore Clipper schooner,
went down from a microburst near Bermuda in 1986. Her first mate at the
time, Sugar Flanagan, is a personal friend, and can usually be found right
down the dock from me on his current boat, the Alden schooner Alcyone,
sailing out of Port Townsend, WA, on charter. The story of their survival
and rescue is a real epic. He and the Pride's cook at the time, Leslie
McNish, resolved to marry if they survived - they were in the raft at the
time, you understand - and some time after they were rescued by a Norwegian
freighter they were married in Maine, where Sugar was from and where his
family resided. They now have two beautiful teenage daughters.

Another was one of Irving Johnson's Yankees, a 98-foot steel pilot schooner,
rigged at the time as I recall as a brigantine, which under later ownership
was taken down the same way in the South Pacific. For many years afterwards
the hull lay up on one of the South Pacific reefs, and for all I know might
still be there. He owned and skippered two different Yankees and both of
them came to bad ends in later ownership, but the one I'm describing was not
the one that Mick Burke of Windjammer Cruises (may their name be cursed)
ended up owning. That one just suffered from some of their usual bad
management and dragged anchor in a blow and ended up on a reef in Rarotonga.

The White Squall movie was kind of over-dramatized, but the events from
which it was drawn really happened.

Tom Dacon