From today's Philadelphia Inquirer

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...l/10517512.htm
(registration may be required to read it on line)


A family spends Christmas stranded at sea

Even after the Coast Guard showed up, the Chester County trio's ordeal wasn't
over.

By Benjamin Y. Lowe

Inquirer Staff Writer



In the choppy waters of the Atlantic on Christmas morning, Jarvis Fox, a
veteran sailor from Chester County, was trying to steer clear of an advancing
storm when he lost control of his 46-foot sailboat.

"The boat was doing terrific, and then, for a reason unbeknownst to us, the
rudder popped off," Fox, 64, a retired Conrail executive who lives in Chester
Springs, said yesterday by phone near Hatteras, N.C.

Fox, his wife Elke, 64, nephew, Manfred Goings, 48, and the couple's Siamese
cat, Tyke, spent most of the day being tossed around at sea 35 miles off the
coast of North Carolina.

The cold Christmas dinner they had planned on their boat was replaced by cold
turkey and stuffing on land at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard Station, where they
arrived safely about 14 hours after the ordeal began.

Their sloop, "Sly Fox," wound up beached on Pea Island, N.C., the day after
Christmas.

Fox said yesterday that they had left their home port of Rock Hall on
Maryland's Eastern Shore on Dec. 21, headed for the Caribbean by way of
Bermuda. Their ultimate destination was Central America, where his son,
Charles, plans to be married in February.

Fox, who prefers sailing to Maine and Nova Scotia, said he had planned the
outing as the family's "last big trip in that direction."

"We wanted to stop in Belize in time for the wedding and then go to Cancun
before taking off to Key West and working our way back home by the end of
March."

Fox said that he had hoped to miss the storms but ran out of luck when the
rudder broke and the boat began to drift.

"What we tried to do was see if there was anything we could do to keep it from
turning in circles," Fox said.

The storm that caught them dumped a foot of snow at the mouth of the Chesapeake
Bay and whipped up high seas on the ocean.

The Coast Guard answered Fox's 10 a.m. distress call and arrived at the Sly Fox
21/2 hours later. Fox said he was relieved when he saw the rescue boats but had
no idea that it would be another 101/2 hours until he would be on land.

Shortly after arriving, a Coast Guard crew attached a cable to the Sly Fox and
planned to tow the boat north to Virginia. But it had to turn around when the
crew realized the storm's 30- to 35-knot winds were blowing them south. Swells
approached eight feet and made Elke Fox, who has sailed with her husband up and
down the East Coast, seasick.

"After a couple hours of trying to progress north, we had gone backward due to
the conditions," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Justin Schnute, who was on one
of the two boats dispatched to rescue the family. The rescuers instead headed
south toward their base at Oregon Inlet, N.C.

Schnute said the family did not panic.

"They were all surprisingly calm and collected," he said. "Of course, they were
very fatigued after being in those conditions."

Fox, his wife and nephew anchored the boat about a mile offshore and were then
transferred onto a cutter. Elke Fox and her cat nearly went overboard during
the transfer, but were caught by Coast Guard crew members.

They ate Christmas dinner at the Coast Guard station and expected to return to
their boat the next day.

But they woke to find it beached six miles south on Pea Island, N.C. The storm
had ripped the boat's anchor from the bottom, and Fox said yesterday he now
must wait for the ocean to calm down before it can be lifted off the sand.

"I was thinking, how could anything like this happen on Christmas Day," Fox
said. "What a disaster we were having. But as I look back on this, the real
meaning of Christmas is the actions of the men and women of U.S. Coast Guard.
They were superb."

Frank Bell
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