The Rescue of the John F. Leavitt

Atlantic Ocean Rescue
by Don Millsap

Off the coast of Long Island, Dec. 27, 1979

The John F. Leavitt, the first American commercial sailing vessel built in 40 years, was on its maiden voyage from Maine to Haiti with a cargo of lumber when it encountered heavy seas some 280 miles off the coast of Long Island. Battered by 20-foot waves, the cargo broke loose and damaged the hull of the ship. The crew managed to keep the ship afloat for 24 hours until the morning of Dec. 27, 1979, when the captain radioed for assistance. Two HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopters and an HC-130 Hercules from the 106th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Group, New York Air National Guard, were dispatched for this mission. Preceded by the HC-130, the helicopters arrived to find that the ship's 80-foot masts precluded hoisting the crew from the deck. Two pararescuemen, Tech. Sgts. Jay Jinks and Paul Bellissimo, jumped from the helicopters into the water and boarded the ship to direct the rescue operation. In the last few minutes of daylight, the nine crewmen and the two Guardsmen boarded life rafts and were then hoisted aboard the waiting helicopters. The Air National Guardsmen of the 106th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Group added yet another chapter to the annals of peacetime heroism by performing a service to their fellow citizens.

In Maine: A Bold Launching into the Past, TIME Magazine, September 3, 1979

New York Times, July 18, 1982

A DREAM THAT FOUNDERED

By ROSEMARY BRESLIN

THE waves were over 20 feet high and the winds stronger than 60 miles an hour on that eighth day at sea. ''The sun was setting in the west and we were sinking in the east,'' Jon Craig Cloutier said.

 

Mr. Cloutier, a film maker, was one of nine persons aboard a 97-foot schooner, the John F. Leavitt, on its maiden and final voyage. The ship was 187 miles off the coast of Long Island on Dec. 29, 1979, and night was approaching when the nine aboard and 3,600 feet of film were saved by two helicopters from the 106th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Group.

 

A Russian trawler had received the ship's call for help and sent an S O S to the New York National Guard in Westhampton. ''Two large jolly green giants appeared in the sky,'' Mr. Cloutier said. ''The last thing to go into one helicopter was my film.'' Fifty thousand dollars worth of photographic equipment was left on the ship.

 

The film from the ship, combined with the 100,000 feet of film Mr. Cloutier had shot in the previous four years, will have its Long Island premiere at the Huntington Community Cinema at 8 P.M. on Tuesday and Wednesday. ''Coaster: The Adventure of the John F. Leavitt'' was the 1982 American Film Festival blue ribbon winner for best feature documentary.

 

The 90-minute color film follows the construction of the twomasted handcrafted schooner from the day the keel was laid nearly four years earlier to its end at sea after one hour of sunshine, three and a half days of calm and four and a half days of squall.

 

The boat was the dream of Ned Ackerman, a former English teacher, who thought a wind-powered wooden schooner, modeled on those built a century before, could combine his love of sailing with a way to make money. Mr. Ackerman was carrying canning chemicals and lumber to Haiti on the ship's first voyage.

 

No cargo-carrying schooner had been built in the United States since 1938. The $350,000 ship was named after John Faunce Leavitt, who had written a book on the last remaining wooden whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan.

 

Mr. Cloutier spent seven and a half years in all on the film. ''The hardest problem was cutting the film so it would have an appeal to a wide audience,'' he said. His film is about the sea and a man fulfilling his dream, even if the dream's end is not the one that was planned.