| Larry Robbins, Glenview Capital Management (Bloomberg) |
Larry Robbins, the founder of the long-running New York hedge fund firm Glenview Capital Management, told investors that he and his 11-year-old son, Ryan, had a brush with death while fishing on New Year’s Eve during a vacation in Anguilla.
In his fourth-quarter letter to investors, dated March 18 and obtained by Alpha, Robbins details a harrowing experience in which their boat took on water, and father and son had to jump in the water with their life jackets.
“Sometimes a scary experience like that causes a person to look at life and reevaluate one’s priorities,” says Robbins in the letter. “I couldn’t be prouder that this experience simply reinforced the values handed down to me by my parents and grandparents, and shared throughout Glenview. People, not things.”
According to Robbins’s account in the letter, on December 31 he and his son set out in a 34-foot charter boat with two local captains, “bottom fishing for tropical fish or trolling for tuna or marlin.” After catching just two tiny fish in an hour, they headed toward Prickly Pear Island, where Robbins says the seas drop from 60 feet to 700 feet, “similar to the canyons we fish offshore of Long Island.”
Robbins then tells of how, within 15 minutes, they hooked a big fish, “as line starts screaming out the reel of the back left fishing rod.” As his son and both captains worked the fish, Robbins says he worked to ensure that the other lines did not tangle.
“We had following seas (waves coming from behind us), and the boat had an open space to the swim platform and ladder — with the captains and Ryan in the back left corner of the boat and the large fish pulling down on the rod, we started to take on a bit of water given the relative elevation of the waves and the opening in the boat,” Robbins says.
Explaining that generally, taking on water is not “an immediate crisis” since all boats have a bilge pump that pumps water back out, Robbins adds that in this case, the bilge pump “failed” or never worked, and the boat starting taking on more water.
“Ryan and I took the rod to the front of the boat, balancing the weight while the crew manually bailed the water from the back with empty containers,” Robbins relates. “However, the weight of the water we had already taken on kept the boat slightly tilted backwards, and it became increasingly apparent that it was only a matter of time before physics won out. The captains called their boat dispatch for help, and they were working furiously to save their boat. However, recognizing the inevitability of the situation, Ryan and I threw the rod overboard and began the preparations for evacuation.”
Robbins hurriedly put on Ryan’s life jacket and threw overboard things that could float, such as cushions, empty coolers and floating rings. He and Ryan also tossed over a self-inflating lifeboat that Ryan had spotted. Robbins then had his son jump in the water, and he followed right afterward.
“Less than a minute later, the boat was fully vertical, with only five feet of the bow above water where the air trapped in the forward hold kept it afloat for its last minutes,” Robbins continues. “I got Ryan on top of a floating seat cushion, and we then made our way paddling, while holding all that floats, to the inflatable lifeboat that had floated 50 feet away. We got there at the same time as the two captains, and they knew how to trigger the self-inflation device.”
Ryan and one captain got into the boat, which Robbins describes as the size of a small bathtub. He stayed next to the boat in the water. Ten minutes later they spotted a rescue boat, and within 15 minutes they were aboard.
“The captains and the second boat wanted to spend time trying to save the capsized boat whose tip was still visible, but then it sank completely, and I was anxious just to get Ryan back to shore,” Robbins continues. “Five miles off the coast of Anguilla, our boat sank to the bottom of the ocean.”
Robbins muses that he does not know what type of fish pulled them into the water. He speculates that it was a large tuna, given the location and that the fish did not surface.
On reflection, Robbins says he left his phone, wallet, iPad and “lucky shoes in a bag” on the boat. “While the phone and iPad would have nearly certainly been ruined by the water, my wallet would have dried and my shoes were sentimental. In truth, I didn’t even think of them,” he recalls. “In a crisis, all I could think about was Ryan.”
Elsewhere in the letter, Robbins reports that the firm’s Glenview Offshore Opportunity Fund and Glenview Capital Opportunity Fund returned 24.8 percent and 25.25 percent in 2014, respectively, while the firm’s Glenview fund and its offshore counterpart gained 14.66 percent and 17.71 percent, respectively, for the year. Investors are likely pleased with those results but are undoubtedly more pleased that both Robbins and his son are safe. As Robbins himself said, people, not things.
