Dilemma: Right vs. Right
A Sailor's Challenge: The Risk of Rescue
Our family sailed out of Georgetown, in the Bahamas, heading due east into the Atlantic on our 40-foot sailboat. The second day out a gale hit us. Mary (age 10), Laura (age 7), and I were severely seasick. Though dead on our feet with weariness, Tom and I took two-hour shifts at the wheel.
About 45 miles off the U.S. Virgin Islands, where we expected to make landfall before morning, Tom woke me at 11 p.m. for my turn at the helm. As I was rousing myself, he exclaimed, "Look at that light!" I looked where he was pointing and saw a yellow-orange light in the sky. Thinking the light might be on an approaching vessel, Tom checked the radar. But the light vanished, and the radar screen showed nothing. Then another light flared in the sky. Tom, from his prior military experience, recognized it as a parachute flare. Taking a bearing on it with the compass, he noted our exact position, course, and speed.
At sea, a flare usually means one thing: a ship in distress. And the ethics of the seagoing community is clear: You do what you can to render assistance. So despite our dangerous weariness, we knew we had to help. But how?
Using first the VHF radio, which has a range of about 40 miles, and then the single-sideband radio with a range of hundreds of miles, Tom tried raising the U.S. Coast Guard. No response. He then called the Virgin Islands marine operator, and was patched through to the Coast Guard. Forty-five minutes had passed since we'd first sighted the flares--which meant that, at our speed, we were already six miles away.
The Coast Guard told us they had received another call regarding flares in this area as well, and would appreciate it if we would return to the location and see if we could "draw more flares."
Tom replied that, having been at sea for six days, we were mentally and physically exhausted. He noted that while the flares might indicate a fellow mariner in distress, they might also be signals for a drug rendezvous or a trap staged by pirates. Turning back would be difficult, and potentially dangerous.
Note: This and other dilemmas on this site come to you without their real-life resolutions. We encourage you to think for yourself about how you might resolve them, since the nature of each dilemma is highly individualistic. In sharing these dilemmas, we do not endorse them in any way, but rather offer them for your consideration.
