Lone sailor scuppers own ship after storm rescue by QM2 liner
A BRITISH sailor made a “traumatic” decision to sink his own boat as he was rescued by a Cunard liner from an Atlantic storm.
Mervyn Wheatley, 73, a former Royal Marine, was picked up by the Queen Mary 2 liner after his yacht was severely damaged in an “unusually extreme” North Atlantic storm.
The father-of-two from Newton Ferrers, Devon, was sailing his 42ft yacht single-handed in a transatlantic race when it was hit by the storm on Friday. His wife, Penny, said the yacht was knocked over during severe weather in the early morning and he scuppered the boat so it would not be a danger to other shipping.
“He was down below when the mast went under water,” she told the BBC. “It meant everything was thrown across the cabin and he thinks some plywood went through the porthole and in came the water. He has never lost another boat. The last 36 hours have been a nightmare, because she could have gone down with him on board. There’s no way he would have survived on a life raft in those conditions.”
John Lewis, the race director at Royal Western Yacht Club, which held the race, said Mr Wheatley’s decision to sink his ship would have been “traumatic” as “a boat to a skipper is a friend and a support”.
Mr Lewis said the depression the fleet encountered was “unusually extreme”, adding that it was more serious than the Fastnet disaster of 1979, a storm which claimed the lives of 15 yachtsmen and three rescuers. He said that of the 21 boats that started the race in Plymouth at the end of May, bound for Newport, Rhode Island, only nine are still competing. “We have run this race every four years since 1960 and this is the worst we’ve ever had,” he said.
Despite Mr Wheatley’s yacht, Tamarind, being battered in 50ft seas by winds reaching 60 knots (69mph), the pensioner was described as being “uninjured and in good spirits”.
It was his 19th Atlantic crossing and he had planned to sail back singlehanded, with the 6,500-nautical-mile voyage ending in July or August.
The UK Coastguard and counterparts in Halifax, Canada, launched a rescue mission involving an RAF C-130 Hercules after detecting a distress beacon at around 4am on Friday.
Coordinators radioed the QM2 for assistance, which diverted its course and headed to the scene, arriving at around 1pm the following day.