Looking for an extra $10,000 while you’re lounging in the Caribbean? Read on.
A young English couple and their two adorable kids saw their cruising dream fall apart just before Christmas when they abandoned their disabled yacht Dove II in sporty conditions about 500 miles East of Antigua. Two Chinese cargo ships couldn’t make the rescue, but the lee they created while standing by helped the crew of the charter Discovery 67 Tilly Mint pull the crew of Dove to safety with a life raft. Here’s an excerpt of the rescue story from the rescuees, and head over to their blog for an extremely positive look at the aftermath of a decidedly non-positive experience. The story begins with the disintegration of Dove’s rudder, here.
Around 5 o’clock a lot happened, Falmouth coastguard rang and advised James to leave the vessel, Fort de France followed and advised the same, Newseas Jade moved towards us, into a position to create a lee and Tilly Mint bounced around next to us looking gorgeous. When they’d radioed the night before they had sounded so professional, now we could see them and they looked professional.
We confirmed the plan on the radio and then it all happened so fast, Jim deployed the life raft off the back of the boat and then we had a moment, it was probably three seconds long but it was beautiful and broke my heart all in one and then I jumped, off the boat and fortunately into the life raft. Now I must pause here, when you think of life rafts you think I could do that, I could hang out in a life raft, drifting around, life would be fine and I’d survive. No, just no. This one was a six man raft, it was tiny and you feel incredibly exposed and open to the elements, it’s sitting on a piece of plastic floating over 4000ft of sea? I got on my knees and James basically threw me Heath, he was so brave, I hadn’t witnessed him and James’s goodbye but he just sat where I told him, didn’t scream, didn’t cry, he just said “Mummy, I don’t like this!”
Isla came down next and again she landed in my arms in the raft, she was very scared but she sat down next to Heath. I was saying things like ” its like a paddling pool!” But as I looked at their faces they were just scared and in the end I just said repeatedly “you’re fine, we’re going to be ok” Tony appeared in the raft and James cut us free, we were off the boat, we were in a life raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This is a shit situation but we’ve got to get out of it and we unfortunately have to do that ourselves, so we all tried to stay calm.
Now, about that 10 grand: The patriarch of the Dove family posted this today: URGENT $10,000 REWARD FOR RECOVERY. Sadly we had to abandon our yacht DOVE II 460nm due east of Antigua on the 21/12/16. We are now trying to find out where it is with the hope of recovery and carrying on with our adventure. It should now drifting towards the islands. Could I ask people to keep a sharp lookout for it and report any sightings to myself or the coastguard. Many thanks, James.
You can read the full story of what actually went wrong on our blog.
Find out where the yacht is likely to drift by cruising the thread. Photos from the Dove II blog.
