It was a Friday night, sure, but he was early to bed, as usual.
There was a game to think about – the Buffalo Sabres, the National Hockey League's best team, in town to play his Montreal Canadiens – and Bob Gainey wanted to get an early start on Saturday.
At almost the same time that the Canadiens general manager turned out the lights in his downtown condominium, his daughter Laura stepped out on the deck of the Picton Castle as the ship hit heavy waters about a thousand kilometres off the coast of Cape Cod.
She shouldn't have been there. She should have been down below, in her own bed.
But she was 25 years old, she was living her dream and, as her father often said, she liked to “live on the edge.” Where this sailing gene came from, no one knew. She had been born in Montreal and grown up in Minnesota and Texas, but now she was so in love with sailing she had a tall ship tattooed on her left shoulder and liked nothing in the world better than climbing eight storeys up the mast, unfurling the royal and watching it catch the wind.
The royal is a small sail that puffs out majestically, triumphantly, and is used only in light, favourable winds.
This was no night for such a sail. The gale-force wind was at 55 knots, the waves slamming into the 55-metre-long barque and the ship tossing heavily. She'd been told to stay below, like most of the other young and less-experienced sailors.
She went out on deck without a life jacket. She did not use a safety tether. Perhaps she simply wanted to see the ship battle the storm for herself. We will never know. One wave, some say a “rogue” wave, seemed to reach up and simply slap her off the deck.
Gone, in an instant, with reports of one quick, small cry for help.
No one could see anything, not with the early December dark, not with the sheered water flying in the wind, not for the exploding crashes against the hull. Those who saw her vanish could only throw flotation devices after her and pray that Laura, a fine swimmer, would be able to find one of them in time.
Bob Gainey awoke at 4:30 a.m. A fastidious, meticulous man, he busied himself with some paperwork and then, nearing 6 a.m., he checked his BlackBerry.
“I had three messages,” he remembers. “Three consecutive messages that came in around 11:30, 11:35, 11:45 and said ‘Please call.' I didn't need to make the call to know there was a problem. I knew there was a problem.
“I just didn't know how bad the problem was.”
GROWING UP GAINEY
Life was never supposed to be like this for a hockey hero. As West Coast humorist Eric Nicol once so charmingly put it, “For any God-fearing young Canadian, the ultimate reward is to be chosen for the NHL All-Star Game. If he later goes to Heaven, that is so much gravy.”
Bob Gainey played in four National Hockey League All-Star Games. He once told his road hockey and rink-rat buddies back in Peterborough, Ont., that he was going to grow up to become captain of the Montreal Canadiens, and he did, for half of the 16 years he played in Montreal. He won five Stanley Cups. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs. He was so brilliant defensively that his abilities inspired the league to create a new trophy, the Frank Selke, to honour the checking forward – and he promptly won it the first four years. When he retired, he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. He had been a lock for years.
