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TwitThisPursuing a Dream
The Stavros S Niarchos, a square-rigged British training ship, had been about 120 miles to the northwest of American Fire when the captain received the distress call. He brought the 197-foot-long brig about amid 30-knot winds and violent waves to make a sector search of the area guided by the Coast Guard plane.
The crew of the Stavros dropped a life raft, and Sarah and Emily struggled aboard. Weak, exhausted after nearly 17 hours in cold seas, their last challenge was climbing the rope ladder of the heavily rolling ship.
They stripped and were wrapped in warm dry blankets. The first-aid officer checked them over. Their leg muscles had atrophied from weeks in the rowboat. They were given tea and porridge; rest for bone-cold and battered bodies was what they needed most. What they wanted most was a hot shower. It would be their first in 47 days. The next day, they e-mailed Butler. "Hey, Bill, we are now safely aboard the Stavros ..."
Four months later, American Fire was found by fishermen; it was floating near the French West Indies. Emily and Sarah made plans to bring the boat to Florida for repairs -- and to train for the 2007 Woodvale race. "We can't start something that we can't finish," Emily says. They want to team with Butler again.
"The girls don't realize how close they came to death," Butler says. Yet he'd be the last person to squelch a dream. "I'd probably do the same thing they're doing. I'd say, What the heck. Let's prove we can row the Atlantic."
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