24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A catamaran with three dogs was in danger. A cruise ship saved them.
On a stormy night in the South Pacific, four sailors and three dogs huddled in the cabin of a bucking catamaran. They were adrift, nearly 200 miles off New Caledonia, with no engines or radio communication. The mast had snapped, and the dangling pieces were bashing and scraping against the hull. One big wave could shatter their protective armor.
With a mix of hope and resignation, the ship's owners, Dustin Leonard and Helena Franczak, called for help. Then, cuddling their dogs, they waited for a response.
About 100 miles away, captain Edu Ferrone was steering the Carnival Splendor toward the cruise ship's next port in Vanuatu. He had learned of the distressed sailboat and was weighing the comfort of his passengers against the perilous predicament of the sailors.
Five hours later, a massive vessel emerged from the darkness and sidled up next to the tiny boat.
'We see this beautiful floating city coming toward us,' said Franczak, 'and we're like, 'Yes!''
On May 14, Leonard, 38, and his fiancée, Franczak, 39, set sail from Queensland, Australia, on the 42-foot catamaran La Vita. Their crew included Julieta Zapata and Ivan Boueke, hired deckhands who would help with night watch. They also brought their French bulldogs, Juno and Potato, and an Alaskan klee kai named Wiggle — all salty dogs.
'They love boat life so much,' said Franczak, who documents their adventures on the YouTube channel Sailing Barking Cat. 'Every day at sunset, they chase each other and run around the boat.'
If a storm is brewing while they are at anchor, Wiggle will sit on the bow and contemplate the sky like an ancient mariner.
For their maiden voyage, they planned to sail to Fiji. A storm was forecast two days out, but they were confident they could outpace it. Leonard, who founded a wine company, said the first few days were challenging. Large swells and blustery winds knocked them around, but the voyage was otherwise smooth.
Then trouble hit.
First, the engine's starboard battery died. Soon after, the port battery started to overheat. The boat was 'rocking like a rodeo,' Leonard said, so they had to wait a day to attempt a repair. They called their diesel boat mechanic on shore, but the engines were kaput.
'This is like a seven- to eight-day trip and we're not even halfway done, and we have no engines,' Leonard said on a Zoom call aboard the Splendor, which was docked on Mystery Island in Vanuatu. 'We still have the sails, so we start sailing and are making good progress.'
They were inching closer to New Caledonia when a surprise storm blindsided them. The tempest kicked up the waves to more than 16 feet and wind to 40 knots. Rain pummeled the sailboat, and lightning electrified the sky. They were drenched and worried about getting electrocuted, so they engaged the autopilot and hunkered down in the cabin, all seven of them strapped into life jackets.
'We thought we were gonna get through it,' Leonard said, 'but then all of a sudden …'
A gust knocked a wind instrument off the mast, severing their line to critical information. It was 'hairy,' Leonard said, but they pressed forward. Until the mast broke in two like a brittle branch.
They activated the emergency beacon, or Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, alerting search-and-rescue units of their dire situation. They still had Starlink; however, the cloud cover was so thick, they had to wait for a clearing in the sky before they could send coordinates to rescue operations.
'We are in trouble, we need help, we lost the mast, we are in the danger of taking water anytime,' Franczak recalled of their urgent message. 'Help!'
After departing a few days earlier from Sydney, Ferrone was sailing at a leisurely pace when he learned of the sailboat in distress.
In an email to The Washington Post from the cruise ship, he said he was surprised to read the communication from Nouméa's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, and he immediately grew concerned about the passengers' safety in such treacherous conditions.
'As a dog lover, I also thought about those little creatures,' Ferrone said.
Ferrone said he checked the catamaran's position on the nautical chart; it was roughly on the cruise ship's course to Vanuatu. Moving at a steady clip of 20 knots, the Carnival Splendor reached La Vita around 5 a.m.
To help guide the cruise ship in the darkness, La Vita deployed flares that illuminated the sky. Because of the rough conditions, Ferrone did not want to dispatch lifeboats. Instead, he gently maneuvered the 113,573-ton cruise ship next to their boat and tied up to them.
Ferrone described the approach as 'entering a china shop on the back of an elephant.'
The dogs were first off, handed over to crew members on deck. The humans used a rope ladder and had to time their escape to the movement of the waves.
'If you missed and slipped in between the cruise ship and the boat, it'd be instant death,' Leonard said.
Franczak lost her footing and was hanging on by her hands. Crew members yanked her up by her arms. Leonard, the captain of the ship, was the last to evacuate.
Once onboard the cruise ship, the rescued party, who had had enough time to pack a bag of essentials, were screened by security. The housekeeping, food-and-beverage and medical staff provided them with blankets, food, water and medical attention. They also received two cabins and WiFi, free of charge, and an invitation to dine with the captain.
Over dinner, Ferrone casually mentioned that he could marry the engaged couple at sea. (During the rescue, Franczak lost the diamond in her engagement ring.) Their dinner mates, who included several of the ship's engineers, shared harrowing tales of other at-sea rescues.
'They save a lot of sailors,' Franczak said. 'Everybody had a lot of stories. There was like eight or nine rescues.'
Last week, for example, Carnival Paradise rescued five people from a small boat south of Cuba.
The dogs, who have become a star attraction, earning cuddles from cruisers and crew members, have free range of the ship except for the dining areas. Room service delivers their canine-friendly meals, such as sweet potato and chicken. To cool off, they splash around in a kiddie water park.
The couple are waiting for their insurance company to approve a tow and hope to be reunited with their catamaran in Nouméa. Once La Vita is back in service, they plan to sail to Vanuatu, Fiji and Indonesia.
On their odyssey, they will likely cross paths with cruise ships. When they do, Franczak said, 'we will wave and send them lots of love.'
