FALL GUY

Thomas Tangvald's attachment to the sea was magnetic. It may ultimately have been his undoing.

- HERB MCCORMICK

THE VOYAGE WAS A ludicrous proposition from the outset, and, in retrospect, there was only one way it could've ended: tragically. In July 1991, a well-known and controversial c il cruising sailor named Peter Tangvald set sail from the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra southbound for Bonaire, ostensibly to safely negotiate the onset of hurricane season. Joining Tangvald aboard his engineless 50-foot cutter was his 7-year-old daughter, Carmen, but the kooky part of the enterprise was the towline to the leaky 22-foot sailboat trailing astern, commanded by his 14-year-old son, Thomas. The elder Tangvald had decreed that the boy stay aboard the smaller vessel to bail it out along the way so it wouldn't sink beneath him. Neither boat carried a VHF radio; there was no way to communicate beyond waving and hollering.