Living, after losing their daughter

Published 12:00 am Friday, May 9, 2008

By LISA BRITTON

Baker City Herald

Rhiannon Borisoff’s childhood writings reflect a girl who always accentuated the positive.

Her ideas of happiness:

andquot;Read good books over again.andquot;

andquot;Watch good comedy shows.andquot;

andquot;Put happy vacation pictures up.andquot;

andquot;Don’t dwell on sadness.andquot;

This note, written in Rhiannon’s juvenile script, wasn’t always stuck to the front of the Borisoffs’ fridge.

But this scrap of paper, just like her plants and necklaces and high school papers, became suddenly significant to her parents, Michael and Lynne, when their daughter went missing at sea May 7, 2007.

Rhiannon, 22, was part of a four-member crew transporting the 54-foot sailboat Flying Colours from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, to Annapolis, Md.

The other crew members were Captain Trey Topping, 39, Jason Franks, 34, and Christine Grinavic, 25.

Rhiannon, who began sailing in May 2006, was a deckhand aboard Flying Colours, which meant she worked the sails and took her turn at night watches to scan the sea for boats, whales and other obstructions.

The crew sailed from St. Thomas on April 30, 2007. At 3:30 a.m. May 7, Coast Guard watch standers at the Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) in Portsmouth, Va., received an alert from the sailboat’s Emergency Position Indication Radio Beacon.

As the Coast Guard dispatched rescue crews to Flying Colours, more emergency signals came in and the search was switched to the nearest boats.

The Coast Guard rescued nine people that day from rough seas with 40-foot waves and 45 mph winds.

But rescuers never found a trace of the Flying Colours or her crew.

The RCC lost signal contact with the sailboat at 7 a.m. May 7.

The vessel’s last known position was 120 miles southeast of Cape Lookout, N.C.

This haunts Michael: The crew spent four hours waiting for rescue.

andquot;That has got to be a forlorn, forsaken feeling,andquot; Michael said. andquot;That’s what nightmares are made of.andquot;

The Coast Guard searched the sea for six days and covered 282,000 square nautical miles, an area larger than Texas. The search ended May 12, though the Coast Guard Web site notes that andquot;a search and rescue case is not closed until the search object has been located.andquot;

Both Lynne and Michael still keep hope that their daughter will, someday, return.

andquot;There are tremendous stories of survival at sea,andquot; Michael said.

andquot;You’d like to think it’ll be one of those miracles,andquot; Lynne said.

A memorial for the Flying Colours crew is planned Saturday at the Seaman’s Church Institute in Newport, R.I. The Borisoffs will observe their own memorial here in Baker City, but their tribute to Rhiannon will be read at the Newport gathering by her boyfriend, Walter Cavanagh.

Rhiannon was born at home, on Grace Street in Baker City, at 3:10 a.m. July 26, 1984, under a full moon and lightning-streaked skies.

Lynne and Michael both grew up on the East Coast, and Rhiannon inherited her parents’ love of the ocean even though she grew up in arid Eastern Oregon.

andquot;Just about every summer her and I would go back East,andquot; Lynne said.

In her later teen years Rhiannon made the trip by herself and found summer jobs at grocery stores and restaurants.

In May 2006 she again headed to New England and began attending Animal Behavior College to be a dog trainer. She also started sailing.

She flew home in November 2006, and told her parents she’d decided to stay back East to manage some apartments and finish the dog training program. She was also volunteering at the Potterleague animal shelter in Middletown, R.I.

In spring of 2007 she was asked to crew the Flying Colours.

andquot;There were two captains on board that’s why I had no problem with it,andquot; Lynne said.

Michael was already in New England visiting family when Rhiannon left for St. Thomas. She had a whole list of father-daughter activities for when she returned.

Lynne joined her husband when the sailboat went missing. He stayed for three weeks; she stayed until September.

andquot;I couldn’t drag myself away,andquot; Lynne said. andquot;I live here, but my heart’s there.andquot;

Over the past year Michael has spoken with sailors and researched weather reports to find some clue as to what happened to the Flying Colours.

andquot;I’ve gone through reams and reams of data,andquot; he said. andquot;Everything is speculation.andquot;

Theories range from a rogue wave capsizing the boat to a total loss of communication equipment because the crew never made contact, even for weather reports, from the time they left St. Thomas.

andquot;No one heard from them for eight days,andquot; Michael said.

andquot;We’re thinking they had electrical problems,andquot; Lynne said.

andquot;What if, what if, what if. It just drives you crazy,andquot; Michael said.

They rule nothing out.

andquot;Maybe the boys took the girls somewhere,andquot; Lynne said with a sad smile.

The Borisoffs keep their hopes alive while learning to deal with Rhiannon’s disappearance.

Michael keeps close a folder filled with watercolor paintings and notes his daughter made him in her youth, all signed andquot;From Rhiannon Borisoff.andquot;

She loved words, and her favorite quotes frame photos of her smiling face.

One saying she jotted down still gets Michael: andquot;It’s better to die hard than to fade away.andquot;

On May 19, Michael will board a boat in St. Thomas and sail the exact route that his daughter did a year ago.

andquot;I’m hoping this transport will give me some idea of what she saw, what she smelled,andquot; he said.

They will stop at the last known coordinates of the Flying Colours.

andquot;We’re going to put out a message in a bottle, and floral arrangements as a gesture in tribute and honor to the sailors,andquot; he said.

Lynne’s therapy is quilts she’s made 11 since last May.

For one, which is nearly finished, Lynne made quilt blocks from Rhiannon’s favorite shirts and embroidered sayings that remind her of her daughter.

andquot;I had a hard time cutting them up,andquot; Lynne said.

There is one she hasn’t had the heart to cut. She handles it with care, this white cotton T-shirt sized for an infant.

It reads andquot;Born at Home.andquot;

As they speak of Rhiannon, both Michael and Lynne list things she liked: Latin dancing, boxing, Bob Marley, astronomy and her favorite movie, andquot;Elf.andquot;

There are other things too she saved money from birthdays and holidays to buy a car, she collected heart-shaped rocks, she spent hours next door with her andquot;West Coast Grandmaandquot; Mary Heriza.

It is these memories that keep Rhiannon alive.

andquot;A parent’s greatest fear is people forgetting,andquot; Michael said.