Acid Rain

By Rusty Dawdy

On the evening of March 19, 2025, skipper Alex Carter boarded a large container ship somewhere off the coast of Cuba. Through the treacherous seas, he watched the faint light of his small sailboat, the Acid Rain, thrash in the waves. She was taking on water and beginning to list as the dim mast beacons slowly disappeared into the night.

He had an additional three days at sea to ponder the fate of his beloved home before the slow commercial vessel reached the Port of Houston. Alex was no stranger to tremendous obstacles on this, his second leg of his world journey, but the ocean had delivered a seemingly fatal blow to his dream of sailing around the world.

ALEX CARTER, CENTER, WITH IBAI FROM SPAIN AND ANASTASIA FROM RUSSIA, WHO HITCHHIKED WITH THE ACID RAIN OUT OF GUATEMALA

Alex had already done the math and figured the Acid Rain might be able to remain afloat for 12 to 24 hours or so before the incoming water would overwhelm the bilge pumps, and she’d be done. The Acid Rain was lost to the sea. Abandoned. There was zero expectation that she would ever be seen again. On the tedious trip to the northern Gulf coast, Alex’s very being was consumed and sickened, obsessed with his watch, his every second tormented, speculating each specific moment’s precise fate of his cherished ketch.

Within 48 hours, he had accepted it. She’d finally sunk. And by the time he was flying home to England, his thoughts had shifted to himself and what it would take to begin putting his life back together. Over time, the immediate torture waned slightly, but the whole scenario continued to haunt him. He knew it probably always would.

Six weeks later, on May 1, Alex, back in the UK, received a random and impossible message from the Cameron Parish Sherriff’s Department. The Acid Rain had washed up on a remote stretch of beach in Southwest Louisiana. The small 38-foot yacht had plenty of adventures before she and Alex merged their lives, and apparently, she had quite an escapade after he reluctantly parted with her.

The Perfect Home

In 1990, the issues of pollution had become a worldwide concern, and a team racing the boat in the South Atlantic Race chose the name Acid Rain to raise awareness. A South African organization, Sailing for the Blind, had assembled a three-man crew which consisted of a deaf skipper and two blind mates to compete in the annual regatta from Cape Town, South Africa, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It’s hard to fathom what that trip must have been like. After decades on the ocean, multiple owners, trips, continents and races, the Acid Rain fell into disrepair. Her last owner passed away, and his widow was left to clean up the mess. Alex and his brother had traveled to Cornwall, England, to look at a different boat and decided to go take a quick look at the Acid Rain while they were there. Of the two boats, the Acid Rain was by far the least suitable for Alex’s journey.

She was too small. The steel hull was rusted with many holes. There wasn’t any part of her that didn’t need attention. Performing the work needed to make the Acid Rain seaworthy would be an adventure of its own. But when Alex stepped aboard, the boat chose him. He’d never been as certain of anything in his life. This was where he belonged, and the Acid Rain was to be his home.

Early Travels And A Host Of Health Problems

After months of nonstop work, dedication and financial commitment, Alex sailed down through Europe, made several stops in Africa, and ultimately crossed the Atlantic to South America. He was able to leave his boat in Guatemala while he traveled home to England to earn more money for the next leg of his adventure. While home, he lost a dear friend to suicide and then, while driving back from the funeral in Belgium, suffered a severe car crash. Shortly after recovering, Alex headed back to Guatemala eager to continue his journey.

CARTER AFTER BEING AIRLIFTED TO THE UK FROM GUATEMALA

While preparing to depart from Latin America, Alex had to be rescued from his boat after he suffered a brain hemorrhage and multiple strokes. He still has a huge blood clot in his brain in what he describes as a “stable but difficult situation.” The hemorrhage and blood clot treatments were working directly against each other, and his condition was near impossible to treat.

Alex’s brother flew to Guatemala and was able to have Alex airlifted back to the UK. After days of touch-and-go, weeks of hospitalization and months of treatments, Alex had a renewed vibrance and motivation to continue his trip.

Back in Guatemala, Alex made international news as part of a rescue attempt on a New Zealand catamaran. Peter Becket was a former New Zealand politician who had grown somewhat infamous after being charged and convicted of murdering his second wife and then later having the conviction overturned on appeal.

The New Zealand Herald wrote, “Becket was discovered gravely ill by a woman employed to clean his boat on the Rio Dulce River.” An alert was raised on a private Facebook Page for boaties, with Englishman Alex Carter — who almost died himself in Guatemala waters about a year prior — boarding his small dinghy and battling low visibility to be one of the first on the scene.

Alex said, “his skin was coming off. It was bad. It was raw and it was quite worrying, because I didn’t know if it was some sort of contagious skin-eating disease. I thought, I had to help this bloke because I know how it feels to be stuck out on a boat and in pain.”

The jungle river was remote and dark, hundreds of miles away from civilization, with almost no roads and only occasional primitive villages to connect you to the outside world.

CARTER SAILING ON ACID RAIN WITH FELINE HITCHHIKER SIMBA

Alex coordinated the rescue effort and ultimately got Becket to an ambulance. The two men bonded over their shared trauma; Alex kept him awake, comforted and laughing while learning about his family and personal life. As the two parted ways, he was optimistic about Peter’s chances. Alex felt he had strength despite his weakened state.

A few days later he found out Becket had died. This news weighed heavily on Alex. He was burdened with the hypotheticals of what could have been done differently. Could he have saved Becket’s life?

Leaving Acid Rain Behind

By the time Alex left Guatemala, he had picked up a few hitchhikers — a young man from Spain named Ibai, a Russian girl named Anastasia, and a cat named Simba. They headed up the Yucatan and were going over the top of Cuba, ultimately through the Caribbean islands, bound for Grenada. They were past Isla Mujeres and about 100 miles from Cuba when Alex heard a huge banging. He headed to the stern and peered over the side just in time to see his large rudder slowly descend from the cool blue shallow depth of the Caribbean waters into the colorless abyss of blackness.

He was prepared for most rigging breaks or engine failures. Alex even had multiple plans in place in the event of a broken mast. But he had not imagined nor anticipated this. He weighed his options. Caught in the gulf stream, there was no heading back to Mexico. He felt they could possibly make it to Cuba, but there’s a reef 15 miles off the coast, and traversing it is difficult even with adequate steering. Having dealt with and cheated death so frequently over the last seasons of his life, Alex knew well the dangers they were facing and was unwilling to take any unnecessary risks with the lives of his two young yacht mates.

With the damage to the hull, the Acid Rain had begun taking on water, and it was time to start sending out Mayday calls. Within hours, they had made contact with an Israeli container ship bound for Houston. Altering its course, the giant ship reached them late in the evening as a severe storm was blowing in from the North.

The ship was legitimately enormous, 400 meters long and 10 stories high. With that much weight and inertia, it had zero practical maneuverability. The gulf stream kept the two rudderless ships slowly spinning in circles as the storm blew in and the sun slipped from the sky leaving only a jet-black night.

Ships of that type and size have very few lights, as they are designed to be seen from miles away. When you’re next to it, you are completely blind to the giant black steel wall in front of you. Alex put Anastasia and the cat first aboard, as the tiny dingy slammed up and down against the fortification rising out of the sea. She struggled to reach the rope ladder and froze, crying, insisting she couldn’t do it. Alex feared Anastasia would let go. He would never be able to find her in the night. As he hoisted her up, reassuring her she could indeed make it, he secretly feared the tiny boat could be torn to shreds against the ridged hull of the steel behemoth.

THE ACID RAIN AFTER WASHING ASHORE IN CAMERON PARISH

It took Alex close to an hour to find his sailboat in the night as the two ships slipped farther and farther apart. After collecting Ibai, the two headed back toward the ship. “Where’s the ship?” Alex asked himself. Finally, a dim beacon gave them a heading. By now, they were miles apart. But before the two could make it back, they hit a huge mat of sargassum grass that a rip current had allowed to form. This slowed the tiny 2-hp motor to less than one knot as it began to cavitate and overheat. The situation was dire.

Finally, they found the ship, but the seas continued to pick up as they slammed up and down in the waves, dangerously close to the ridged hull. It took them a despairingly long time –maybe 10 minutes – hopelessly searching before they spotted the white rope ladder. As Ibai scurried up, Alex contemplated going back to the Acid Rain. He wondered if she could make it to Florida with a little luck and a captain who was unwilling to give up. With him aboard, he could keep her pumped out, afloat. Then he remembered how much love and commitment his brother had invested in his survival. Alex thought about his friend who had recently given up on life and the stranger who fought to survive. He owed it to his family to leave.

As men yelled from above, he snapped out of it. It was his turn. The Filipino crew lowered a rope and instructed him to tie off the dingy before Alex made his way up the ladder. To his surprise, the large crew then hoisted the small boat up to the main deck. From the higher elevation, Alex bid a solemn farewell to the Acid Rain as the container ship motored into the night.

The Journey To SWLA

After the CPSO phone call, Alex rushed to the states, but his flight was delayed because of a storm. It’s a big mystery how the Acid Rain made it up on the beach, with two meters of draft she should have grounded out a half mile offshore. They believe the storm that disrupted his flight combined with high tides and a strong south wind managed to deposit the boat on shore.

While the Acid Rain’s exact journey will never be known, Alex has educated himself on the many obstacles she managed to negotiate. First, the bilge pumps. Unlike many motorboats, sailboat batteries rely heavily on solar charging, and they were somehow able to keep the pumps ticking for weeks on their own.

Secondly, the winds. It’s likely the Acid Rain went around Cuba, underneath, and then somehow made a clockwise rim around the gulf. However, when you’re trying to understand the statistically impossible, does it really matter which impossibility is more impossible? It’s a mystery we will never know, but the Acid Rain should not have drifted this way.

Finally, the numerous oil rigs, jetties, pipelines and other obstacles that blanket this section of the coast. Not only should this boat have never been here, but it should have never cleared the impact zone. The old steel hull that once plagued the Acid Rain ultimately ended up saving her.

Help From Heroes

When Alex arrived on May 3, he was escorted down a gravel pipeline road near Tank Battery 45 to his boat, but he was sadly informed that it had been burglarized overnight.

All of his belongings had been thrashed and tossed. All of the high-value electronics were missing. For Alex, it was less about the items and more a feeling of being violated. I imagine the strange peculiarity of even caring, after spending weeks accepting the total loss of the vessel.

Within 10 minutes a deputy called him and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve recovered your stuff.” Ironically, had the boat been stripped while abandoned and adrift offshore, salvage laws may have allowed the finder to keep the stuff. Once the boat hit land, everything changed. The perpetrator was charged with a felony. These same laws make it hard to remove abandoned tents, campers and vessels from our coast and beaches.

Alex made several trips to Cameron to gather belongings and to figure out what his legal and environmental obligations were with the wreckage. While living out of a rental car, he made friends with the men who monitored the pipeline and met a woman named Cynthia who was collecting shark’s teeth on the beach. She politely said, “If anyone can help you, it’s my friend Bill.” She proceeded to call him without being prompted.

Bill was driving home from Houston when a traffic jam convinced him to take the coastal highway back to Carlyss. When Cynthia called, he was only five minutes away. “Bill Terry and his wife Lila are heroes. Heroes!” Alex said to me countless times in our two-hour conversation.

Cynthia was right, if anybody could help Alex, it was Bill.

Bill began devising a sophisticated plan of skill, experience, common sense and Cajun engineering. Alex recounts, “With everything stripped out. Acid Rain was as light as she could possibly be, but she was still a little too heavy. At one point, the crane tipped on one of its outriggers, and it was only just narrowly saved by the skillful handling of the operator. When I saw this, my heart was in my mouth. It was one of the first signs that this may not happen.” Despite continuous obstacles and adjustments, Bill’s enthusiasm and optimism was contagious, and the crew’s spirit and efforts were eventually rewarded.

On May 23, the Acid Rain was headed up Highway 27 to Moss Lake in a coonass caravan to begin her long road of repairs and restoration.

Alex currently can only work 90 days at a time on his travel visa before having to return home to the UK for a few weeks to reset the timeline. His hope is to have the boat back on the water for this years’ Lake Charles Christmas boat parade. I’m looking forward to spending more time with Alex, sharing more from this interview and keeping everyone updated about Acid Rain’s progress in our future columns.

I had planned to ask Alex when would enough be enough? When was it time to give up or accept maybe he’s not meant to sail around the world? By the time he and I finished visiting, I realized … maybe it was never about achieving a goal. Maybe it was never about circumnavigation at all. Alex’s goal wasn’t really to sail around the world. It was to sail around, to be on a sailboat, to overcome obstacles, to persevere, to learn, to grow, to adventure, to meet people, to experience cultures, to journey … for the sake of journey itself.

To live.