Rescued sailor back on shore
Mervyn Wheatley arrived on dry ground Tuesday, looking forward to a Halifax lobster lunch, a flight home to his wife, and buying a new sailboat so he can race across the Atlantic again next year.
The ruddy-faced 73-year-old British skipper came into port aboard the Queen Mary 2 luxury liner, which plucked him from his storm-wrecked yacht during a transatlantic race on the weekend.
Wheatley told reporters he “stood there and laughed’’ when he was escorted to his opulent stateroom on the massive ocean liner after his ordeal in savage seas.
“The contrast between what I had just left, which was a boat in fairly poor condition with water over the floorboards, to this magnificent state room was just surreal,’’ he said. “There I was in the lap of luxury.’’
He was met in Halifax Tuesday by Capt. Jonathan Bregman, a pilot with 413 Transport and Rescue Squadron at 14 Wing Greenwood, who had spotted him amid swelling waters and came to give him a keepsake.
“It’s not the most difficult mission (I have undertaken) but it was the most dynamic,’’ said Bregman. “I’ll never forget this mission. I’d like him to remember that we came to provide assistance.’’
He said he was surprised that Wheatley — one of about two dozen sailors racing from Plymouth, England, to Newport, Rhode Island — was able to survive his ordeal.
“I was definitely surprised just given the small size of the vessel out in the middle of the Atlantic, but I guess he’s a capable sailor ... He was very well composed.’’
The race started with 21 entries — 16 solo sailors and five boats with two crew. By Monday, four yachts had been abandoned, one was under tow with a tug and three had been sunk or scuttled
Wheatley, a former 33-year veteran of the Royal Marines, said he was keen to join the race again next year.
He told reporters Tuesday he would return home to tell his wife the story of how he lost the boat.
It starts in the early morning hours of last Friday, on Wheatley’s 19th trip across the Atlantic. He was awoken after his sailboat was tossed briefly upside down by a violent storm.
For a fleeting moment, as he manually pumped water out of his battered sailboat, Wheatley said he thought about retiring from the sea: “I thought ‘OK that’s it. I won’t do this again.’’’