More Than 15 Minutes Of Fame
(The photos of a Santana 22 being rolled under the Golden Gate were flashed
around the world. Here's the story behind the crash and the rescue. The
skipper's had a breather, and he's ready to talk. Here's an excerpt from
Kimball Livingston's story on the Sail magazine website.)
When Joe Schmidt took his Santana 22 out for yet another Saturday sail, he
had no idea he was on the way to his 15 minutes as one of the most famous
sailors in the world. Then, after his YachtSea had been rolled and
dismasted by a breaking wave under the Golden Gate Bridge, he "knew we had
made a splash, what with the Coast Guard boats and the helicopters and the
fire trucks and police." But that was just the beginning. Only later would
he learn that photographer Wayne Lambright had been at Fort Point, at the
San Francisco Bay entrance, with a Nikon D2h (with a 70-300mm lens) that
shoots 8 frames per second. Lambright came away with one of the most
startling photo sequences ever of a sailing disaster, and when the photos
hit the Net, they made a sensation.
YachtSea capsized and sank on April 2. In the two weeks following, Wayne
Lambright's web site had 17,000,000 page views. He started posting pictures
in the first place to call attention to his online restaurant review
business, www.sfsurvey.com. "The YachtSea thing created a gargantuan
problem," Lambright says. "I run three mission-critical web sites, and the
response nearly crashed my server."
Kimball Livingston's full Sail magazine story:
http://sailmag.com/SAILBOATCRASH/