Half a century has passed since the loss of Ted Heath’s 45ft ocean racing yacht Morning Cloud 3, which claimed the lives of Christopher Chadd and Nigel Cumming, two of the seven crew on board.

The yacht was severely damaged by two mammoth waves off the coast of West Sussex on 2 September 1974; the remaining crew abandoned ship before being rescued.

From the start, former UK Prime Minister Heath wanted to share as many details as possible about the tragic accident so the sailing community at large could learn from the experience.

The skipper of Morning Cloud 3 on that fateful voyage was Don Blewett, who wrote a long account, which was condensed and edited by yacht designer and journalist Julian Everitt for the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s magazine, Seahorse.

The sinking of Morning Cloud 3 made headlines around the globe given Heath had been Prime Minster until only seven months earlier, and had been leader of the Conservative Party for almost a decade.

It also raised plenty of concerns in the sailing world, as this was a state-of-the-art yacht built without regard to cost for one of the most successful teams in the sport.

Heath’s previous boats had won iconic offshore races including the Sydney Hobart Race, the Admiral’s Cup and the Round the Island Race.

It’s often asserted that older boats are stronger and more seaworthy than newer models.

However, even though there are now more boats on the water, events such as the loss of Morning Cloud 3 are rare today.

What can we learn from this incident? And what else have we learnt over the past 50 years?

It’s also important to note that the science behind big breaking waves and weather forecasting has changed significantly since 1974.

In addition, we now have a better understanding of the forces a yacht must withstand in severe conditions and far superior tools for structural engineering calculations.

Today’s epoxy resins are also far more effective than the glues available in the early 1970s.

Timeline to the Morning Cloud 3 tragedy

First, let’s look back to the events of 2 September 1974. Morning Cloud 3, a year-old custom offshore racing yacht designed by Sparkman & Stephens and built by Clare Lallow in Cowes was being delivered from Burnham-on-Crouch on the East Coast to the Solent, a distance of around 160 miles.

This was at the end of Burnham Week, and Morning Cloud 3 wasn’t the only yacht making the same trip.

The Swan 41, Casse Tete left at a similar time but was slightly faster, reaching the relative shelter of the Solent before the strongest winds.

Just before Morning Cloud 3’s crew cast off from Burnham, the 1155 Shipping Forecast reported that Force 5-7 southerly winds were expected for sea areas Humber and Thames; shipping in Dover and Wight should expect Force 6-7 westerly winds, locally Gale 8.

It would therefore be a windy and uncomfortable voyage, but still well within the conditions that a well-found large yacht with an experienced and strong crew should be able to handle.

By nightfall, they’d dropped the headsail and the main was rolled down to around one-third of its full-size area, with 15 turns of the sail around the boom, since the breeze had picked up considerably.

“Although the wind was gusting Force 8 the boat was comfortable and everyone had some sleep,” Blewett reported.

The 0030 Shipping forecast on 2 September was for up to Gale 8, but by 0500 conditions had moderated to a Force 5-6 with occasional Force 7.

Nevertheless, the next forecast at 0600 on 2 September (18 hours after departure) was: southerly Force 6-8, veering south-west, perhaps Severe Gale 9 later. Rain at times. Moderate.

“I again briefly entertained the idea of putting into Dover,” wrote Blewett, “but we were sailing at 8½ knots on course, with a fair tide.”

By 0945 they were abeam of Dungeness then tacked offshore near the Royal Sovereign platform, a little to the east of Beachy Head, to gain some sea room.

The next leg to the Owers, south of Selsey Bill, wasn’t expected to be a full beat so they were not worried about being pushed inshore towards the lee shore of the Sussex coast.

The 1355 update, however, was more problematic, with a forecast of southerly winds Force 6 to Gale 8, locally Severe Gale 9, veering south-west. Periods of heavy rain. Moderate or poor.

“Although this sounded ominous there was little we could do about it,” wrote Blewett.

They later reduced sail to the same plan as the previous night, with the boat nicely balanced and making 4-5 knots.

At around 2300, a few miles before reaching the Owers buoy, Morning Cloud 3 was struck by a big breaking wave that threw her down so violently that several laminated deck beams split and soon a foot of water was above the cabin sole.

Worse still, crew member Gardner Sorum was trailing astern, attached to the boat by his lifeline.

It was only after a head count five minutes later after Sorum had been hauled aboard, that it was realised Nigel Cumming was missing, his tether having broken.

They tacked back onto a reciprocal course in an attempt to find Cumming but failed to locate him in the dark and mountainous seas.

To compound matters, some crew had sustained injuries in the first knockdown, including Gerry Smith who had fractured one vertebrae and displaced three others.

After tacking back onto her original course, Morning Cloud 3 was struck by a second huge wave in a similar position to the first.

This one rolled her far enough to immerse the masthead in the sea.

Christopher Chadd, Heath’s 22-year-old godson, had just emerged on deck but was not clipped on at that point and did not hear the warning shouted to him.

Every effort was made to throw him a line or a lifebuoy but all failed before contact with him was lost.

At the same time the injury list was growing, with Blewett having a broken shoulder blade and three ribs, one of which had perforated his lung, Sorum had also broken three ribs and his right arm was broken in three places.

By now the boat was badly disabled, with further structural damage to the deck beams; a section of coaming and toerail had been ripped away.

The forehatch – an oversized opening designed to facilitate rapid sail changes – was also missing, as was the port cockpit locker lid and the main liferaft stowed inside.

With water now waist deep in the saloon, there appeared every chance the yacht would founder if it encountered a third similar wave.

Blewett made the order to abandon ship, using the remaining four-person liferaft.

Despite the conditions and the injured crew, this was not as difficult as might be expected given the conditions, as the yacht was so low in the water the raft was at a deck level.

The five men then spent several hours in the raft, before being blown ashore on the beach at Brighton.

The raft proved stable until they reached the surf, where it was rolled and the occupants fell through the canopy.

Somehow they managed to put two of the most badly injured crew back in the raft, while the others guided it towards the shore, where onlookers waded in to assist.

The body of Christopher Chadd was found by helicopter shortly afterwards and a few days later local fishing boats snagged the severely damaged wreck of Morning Cloud 3 in 40ft of water, a couple of miles off Shoreham. She was towed to the harbour.

The subsequent inquest absolved everyone concerned from responsibility for the loss of Morning Cloud 3 and the sad deaths of Christopher Chadd and Nigel Cumming.

Heath’s boat was not the only one to encounter difficulties in the same storm: the RNLI’s magazine The Lifeboat reported 66 launches, 57 lives rescued, and 21 vessels saved in the 48 hours from noon on 1 September, making it one of the busiest 48-hours in the RNLI’s history.

Lessons learned from the sinking of Morning Cloud 3

1. Navigation analysis

Of course, much has changed since 1974. Today we know our exact position at all times thanks to GPS and other GNSS systems such as Russia’s Glonass and the EU’s Galileo.

Nevertheless, at the time an error of navigation, putting the boat further inshore and closer to the lee shore than expected, was not thought likely to have been a contributory factor.

A comment from RORC (that doesn’t identify the writer) at the end of the Seahorse article says: “It is impossible to be quite exact as to the position of a yacht in a Force 9 gale. But from John Irving’s account and from Don Blewett’s it is highly improbable that the yacht was inshore.”

Nevertheless, this was written looking through the lens of the mid-1970s – when only basic tools were available for navigation.

Today, being out in similar conditions without GPS and a chart plotter would be almost unconscionable, and for many of us properly scary.

The RORC commentator notes: “However, there is a bulge in the 10-fathom line, and there is always confusion in the seas further west, and these may have combined with the gale blowing straight onto the lee shore in creating unique conditions. The immediate lesson to learn… is respect for the power of the sea and the advisability of keeping – as far as possible – in deep water.”

Adlard Coles also picked up on this in his classic work Heavy Weather Sailing: “Granted that Casse Tete made the same passage without mishap, I think both boats would have been safer had they tacked to seaward immediately as the Owers light buoy opened on the port bow. The disaster underlines the RORC recommendation given after the Channel Storm of 1956, that ‘it is better to be out at sea in open water away from land influences where… she has the best chance of coming through without serious trouble.’”

2. Freak waves

Nevertheless, Coles added a final point, writing: “It has been argued that extra high waves from the synchronisation of wave trains should not be called freaks as they arise from natural causes, but as all seas come from natural causes this appears somewhat pedantic. It is the shape and steepness of occasional freak (abnormal) waves as well as their size which can do the damage. The addition of the Morning Cloud disaster to other mishaps described in this book may cause anxiety but I must emphasise that such occurrences are extremely rare and their number is infinitesimal compared with the countless safe passages made by yachts all over the world.”

For years, the scientific community looked in vain for proof of these rogue waves that have been reported by mariners since time immemorial.

Everything changed on 1 January 1995, when a laser measuring device on the Draupner oil platform in the North Sea recorded a wave height of 25.6m (84ft).

Minor damage inflicted on the platform well above normal sea levels confirmed the reading of the laser sensor.

Five years later, the RRS Discovery, a British research vessel, encountered a significant wave height (the mean height of the largest third of waves) of 18.5m (61ft), with individual waves up to 29.1m (95ft).

A 2004 study using three weeks of radar images taken by European Space Agency satellites found 10 rogue waves, each of which was at least 25m (82ft) high.

As the technology required to measure wave height has improved and become cheaper, more rogue waves have been measured, including one of more than 21m (69ft) at the southern end of the Chanel du Four off the cost of Finisterre in north-western France, during Storm Ciaran on 2 November, last year.

Rogue waves remain sufficiently rare; Coles is correct to note that the overwhelming majority of boat owners will never meet one.

Of the three enormous breaking waves I’ve encountered in 85,000 miles of sailing, the first was deep in the Southern Ocean, on passage from Auckland to Cape Horn, the second roughly 130 miles west-north-west of A Coruña in Galicia, well offshore in 4,000m of water while heading for the Canary Islands.

The third was closer to home, 10 miles south of the Lizard Point on the return leg of the 2019 Azores and Back Race.

This was in an easterly gale, created by high and low pressure systems squeezed together in close proximity, with mean true wind speeds of around 40 knots.

Had I not been racing on a very well-prepared boat for ocean sailing – and with a chance of a very good result – we would have diverted south to Brittany and enjoyed fine weather in Camaret-sur-Mer, where there was never more than 20 knots of breeze while waiting for conditions in the English Channel to moderate.

3. Better modelling

Weather forecasting has improved enormously over the past five decades.

It’s unlikely the crews of Morning Cloud 3 and Casse Tete would have continued past Dover, the last viable port of refuge in an onshore gale on that passage, and may well not have even left Burnham, had they had access to the data we now have available for medium-term forecasts.

The availability of ever more powerful supercomputers, along with step changes in science, means that medium-term weather forecasting has become progressively more accurate at the rate of approximately one day per year.

Today’s six-day forecasts are, on average, more accurate than the 48-hour forecast at the time of the 1979 Fastnet Race storm in which 24 yachts were abandoned out of an initial fleet of 303 entries, with the loss of 15 lives.

There are two aspects to a forecast: what is going to happen and when it’s going to happen.

In many cases, our forecasts today are good at the former, but predicting the exact timing of a weather front four or five days in advance remains a tall order.

We should, therefore, not be surprised if a feature that was initially forecast to come through overnight a week in advance actually takes place during daylight hours, or vice versa.

4. The importance of sea state

When passage planning it’s easy to be fixated on wind strength, but as the loss of Morning Cloud 3 shows, sea state is often a more important factor.

Today we are fortunate in having mostly reliable predictions of swell and significant wave height, though it must always be remembered that headlands, tidal races and relative shallows can create dangerous breaking waves that are out of proportion to those in adjacent areas.

It’s important not to underestimate the potential value of these wave forecasts.

It’s tempting to assume the IMOCA 60s used for the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race can cope with everything thrown at them.

However, before the finish of the last edition, several competitors slowed down on the approach to the Bay of Biscay, waiting for a potentially dangerous sea state to subside.

Wave forecasts were also used in the recent Arkea Ultime Challenge – a non-stop solo race around the globe in giant 100ft trimarans – where a couple
of competitors deliberately slowed their boats ahead of the approach to Cape Horn, again to give time for dangerous seas to moderate.

There are important lessons in this for the rest of us.

5. Wind factor

Gusts of wind are invariably more difficult to handle than steady conditions and are often responsible for inflicting damage to yachts.

Gust predictions are therefore another useful aspect of today’s weather forecasting when passage planning in borderline conditions.

Again it’s important to remember that headlands, valleys and relatively narrow channels, such as the Needles Channel, can cause the breeze to funnel, creating stronger winds in these areas than the raw model output predicts.

It should be no surprise that the accuracy with which numeric weather forecasting can model the winds around geographical features is a function of the model’s resolution.

The UK MetOffice UKV (2km grid size) and French Arome (1.25km or 2.5km grid) are therefore better in this respect than the 9km ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) and 13km GFS (Global Forecast System) models.

However, even then the smallest geographic feature that can be modelled accurately is roughly five times the grid size.

That’s why forecasts with direct input from experienced meteorologists, such as the UK’s Inshore Waters and Shipping Forecasts, can still add significantly to our understanding of the conditions that can be expected.

6. Sail configuration

Questions were also raised at the time as to whether sailing with only a deep reefed mainsail, and no headsail, placed Morning Cloud 3 at greater risk of being overwhelmed by a big breaking wave.

There’s certainly a body of evidence for keeping a useful amount of speed on when sailing downwind in big seas, which makes the boat more responsive to the helm and therefore easier to keep stern-to the largest waves.

But Morning Cloud 3 was close reaching at the time and Blewett reported the boat was comfortable and well balanced under that sail plan.

So seems very unlikely that this was a contributory factor and I’ve not found mention of it in the contemporary literature.

The 1979 Fastnet Race inquiry report canvassed all competitors involved to learn as much as possible from this disaster.

“No magic formula for guaranteeing survival emerges from the experiences of those who were caught in the storm,” the report states.

“There is, however, an inference that active rather than passive tactics were successful and those who were able to maintain some speed and directional control fared better.”

This report also revealed that several competitors experienced breaking waves coming from a very different angle to the rest, which chimes with my own experience in the North Atlantic.

These waves have the potential to cause a lot more damage than those more aligned with the main wave train.

Any time there’s potential for big breaking waves, anyone in the cockpit could be at risk.

Two of the competitors who died in the 1979 Fastnet were lost after being trapped in the cockpit of an inverted yacht.

In the mid-1980s the US Coast Guard commissioned a study using model and full-scale testing to investigate whether drogues could be used to prevent the capsize of yachts in breaking waves.

The report published in May 1987 concluded that ‘in many and possibly most cases’ a properly engineered drogue deployed from the stern of a fin keel sailing yacht can prevent capsize in breaking seas.

Don Jordan was one of the authors and the Jordan Series Drogue he subsequently developed has been successfully used by many ocean voyagers, including Jeanne Socrates.

In addition to reducing the risk of capsize, a yacht lying to a series drogue doesn’t need to be actively steered, so all the crew can be safely below decks.

One of the less reported aspects of the 1979 Fastnet Race storm is that a shocking 51 yachts had one or more crew members washed overboard, sometimes on more than one occasion, leading to the conclusion that: ‘it was obviously sensible to reduce the number on deck, and therefore at risk, to the minimum’.

7. Calculated risk

While much has changed since the loss of Morning Cloud 3, many of the fundamentals remain the same.

It’s still imperative to get the best weather forecasts available and take time to study and understand them thoroughly.

Equally avoid lee shores, tidal races and shoal areas in heavy weather.

Washboards should always be at hand to prevent solid water from entering the accommodation areas, and there should be a means of securing the sliding hatch shut that can be operated from both inside and outside the cabin.

This is a requirement for offshore racing, yet many cruising yachts do not have this safety feature.

The loss of Christopher Chadd also highlights the importance of clipping on before going on deck while your feet are still firmly planted on the cabin floor.

Equipment has also improved; today’s triple-hook lifelines ensure you can remain attached to the boat at all times, including when moving one tether from a cockpit strong point to a jackstay on deck.

Both the loss of Morning Cloud 3 and the 1979 Fastnet Race storm also revealed deficiencies in safety gear ranging from safety harnesses to flares and liferafts.

These have long since been addressed, with the result that the equipment we have today is far more reliable, even in extreme circumstances.

Continues below…

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