Oldham, below, heard him shout “Oh, my God.” Then she heard — and felt — the yacht flip.
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## The Capsize
The specific mechanics of what happened to the Hazana in the peak of Hurricane Raymond are not fully documented. What is known comes from Ashcraft’s account and from physical evidence she examined afterward.
The yacht pitchpoled. Pitchpoling is a catastrophic capsize in which a vessel is flipped end over end — bow over stern — by a following or breaking wave of sufficient force. It is distinct from a beam-on knockdown, in which the yacht is rolled onto its side, and from a rollover, in which it rotates fully. Pitchpoling subjects the entire hull and rig to forces that most yachts are not designed to survive intact, and the resulting damage to the Hazana was severe: both masts broken off, the sails destroyed and dragging in the water, the deck structure compromised, and the interior of the yacht half-flooded from water driven in through broken hatches and seals.
Oldham was thrown against the cabin wall and lost consciousness.
Richard Sharp, tethered to the cockpit, was gone when she woke. His safety harness was still attached to the jackline or the strong point; what was no longer in it was Richard Sharp. The D-ring on his harness had been pried apart by the force of the capsize — the specific hardware failure that caused his loss from the vessel. He was not recovered. He was not found. No search was conducted, in part because Oldham herself had no means to conduct one and in part because the conditions of a Category 4 hurricane offered no possibility of survival for someone in the water without flotation and without means of signaling.