Ruminations: The Boy's Adventure

The 243-metre cargo ship Horizon Reliance that rescued Brothers Mitchell and Bradley James, and Bradley’s nine-year-old son West. Photograph by: Supplied, edmontonjournal.com

"Most of my family - grandparents and cousins - thought I was going to die and didn't want me to go on this trip", the nine-year-old boy said, confiding to reporters interviewing him and his 33-year-old father, and his uncle. All three are recovering from their adventure of an epic sea voyage sailing the winter Pacific from Puerto Valarta, Mexico to Hilo, Hawaii.

The trio of hardy sailor-adventurers were a month at sea when they encountered vessel-battering wind and rain, while adrift in the sea. The squall that rendered their sails useless and overheated their engine proved to be too much of an adversary for them to combat and defeat. Quite the adventure for a grade-three little boy from Calgary.

Quite the decision for a loving, caring, nurturing father wishing to expose his son to worldly adventure, geographic distances and the allure of the great, wide, unpredictable winter seas, despite the pleading of extended family members to leave the boy behind with those concerned for his well-being.

It's one thing for physically mature and ostensibly sensible adults to decide to embark on the adventure of their lives, quite another to haul along a little mascot who, despite the ordeal he had experienced, with the typical ability of a child to bounce back from fear and danger, excitedly viewed being interviewed as becoming "famous".

"As soon as I found out we were gonna be on he news, I said "We're famous!", the boy said, father Brad James and uncle Mitch beside him at a news conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they ended up after having been rescued from their life-threatening predicament. "The weather continued to deteriorate throughout the night and we realized ... we were in the world of hurt", said the father.

The distress call was placed by the desperate trio, picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard, who instructed a container ship that was over 200 kilometres distant from them to head for the 120-metre sailboat, Liahona. They were to somehow manage to manoeuvre the two adults and child from the floundering ship in the throes of a storm.

One of the stalwart sailors, Mitch, uncle of the boy, had been injured when he attempted to repair the sailboat's wind-damaged mast. By the time the rescue vessel, the 250-metre Horizon Reliance, reached them, all three were in the roiling waters. Life rings were thrown to them by the Horizon crew members, who steadily drew them toward the ship.

As the sailboat filled with water and began sinking, the three had taken to the sea; the boat sank within minutes. All three wearing life jackets and strobe lights to enable the ship's crew to sight them, it took fully 50 minutes to complete the entire rescue operation. During which time the 9-year-old kept saying "we're going to die", while his father said he had continued comforting him.

Eventually all three were brought aboard ship to the tremendous relief of all concerned, for obvious reasons. The father mentioned during the interview that he had turned to the Horizon captain to ask how often he had come across a like rescue situation. The captain's response was 'I've been on boats like this for 35 years and it's never happened.'

Not such a bright idea, then, was it, for two men to embark on the adventure of a lifetime during which enterprise they encountered what any search for navigating-in-the-winter-seas might have warned them might occur. But these two men opted for the excitement, and in their great wisdom recklessly endangered the life of a child.