She’d noticed the captain was sound asleep when she’d called. But the captain had the final word on voyage planning, and he refused to deviate. The storm had been growing, so Randolph suggested they consider taking a longer, slower route south through the Old Bahama Channel. She respected him, but told her mother and friends she didn’t like his dismissive attitude. Randolph had a cordial relationship with the captain of the El Faro. “Mom, if I ever die at sea, that’s where I want to be.” Holding course “Let’s hope you never get into some rough seas,” she wrote, “because you know kid, you’re screwed.” A coastal Mainer, Laurie Bobillot knew open life boats to be a thing of the past. “Is that your lifeboat? It’s open,” her mom replied, aghast. Once, Randolph texted pictures of the El Faro’s lifeboats to her mom. After a few tense seconds, the El Faro righted herself. The ship was now pushed in another direction, off the captain’s chosen course. In the coming hours, the El Faro and its crew would fight desperately for survival.Īnother wave slammed into them. The El Faro, sailing near San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, was being knocked about by the strongest October storm to hit these waters since 1866. 1, 2015, and the Atlantic was boiling over. Break the ship in half,” the helmsman said. “Can’t pound your way through them waves. “Oh my God,” she said to the helmsman standing nearby, bracing when the ship she called “the rust bucket” shuddered over another wave. News blurted through the bridge’s radio speaker: Forecasters had named the storm Hurricane Joaquin as it built into a Category 3, with winds of 130 mph. The second mate stood on the navigation bridge high above the El Faro’s main deck, which spread out before her like an aircraft carrier stacked high with red, white and blue cargo containers. Danielle Randolph squinted through rain-splattered windows as the sea freighter lunged upward sharply, then fell into the trough of a 30-foot-tall wave.
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