Unsolvable mystery?

The boat lay rolling in the swell, her mainsail roughly stowed, with bulges of cloth ballooning out from just three or four gaskets lashing it to the boom. It was done in a hurry. Her genoa was also poorly stowed, as though rolled away in an emergency – the turns loose on the luff spar, the sheets twisted together. The sprayhood was still flat on the coach roof, in sailing mode. On her port quarter, a plastic ladder-fender was over the side, dragging in the sea as she dipped to the waves. There was no one on deck, but the hatch was open.

This was the spectacle that greeted the Coastguard cutter that ranged alongside the royal blue hull of the 30ft sloop as she drifted 70-odd miles off Jamaica in the Caribbean in January this year.

Having boarded the British yacht, the coastguard officers made a gruesome discovery: a partly-decomposed and naked body slumped below. It was the yacht’s skipper-owner, Mark Brennan, 42.

For me, the reports in the British press held a grim poignancy: Avrio, a Halmatic 30, was one of the first second-hand boat tests I’d ever carried out for Yachting Monthly.

I remember Avrio well. She was a smart little cruiser, well found and easily handled by one man as he sailed her, with three reefs pulled down, in a stiff breeze on the River Thames at Grays near the boat’s mooring at the Thurrock Yacht Club in Essex.

Below, she was a proper little ship with six berths including a pilot berth. She had a safe, deep cockpit – another good feature for offshore passage-making – while below the waterline she had a long keel, curved spoon bow and transom-hung rudder – all pluses for ocean cruising. Back in the river, however, she was the envy of many of the club members as she often won the Thursday night cruiser races up to Greenwich and back. But when she came up for sale not many locals could afford the asking price and she was sold away.

Mr Brennan, a window cleaner, hailed from South Shields, Tyne & Wear and was reportedly a relatively inexperienced sailor. Certainly crossing the Atlantic is not for the novice, especially alone.

But that is what he did and made it to Barbados having had a ‘hard’ crossing resulting in the loss of his dinghy.

From Barbados he sailed to Grenada where he told other sailors his Beta diesel engine had suffered from dirty fuel issues.

That is the only clue we have so far in trying to unravel this mystery. I now posit my theory:

He left Grenada under power so we assume the dirty fuel issue was, at least, temporarily sorted. The boat is next seen as described above, adrift and not under command. The fact the sails are stowed roughly suggests they were stowed in a hurry. The fact the ladder-fender is deployed over the stern suggests an inspection of the propeller was in hand and the fact Mr Brennan was found naked suggests he was about to immerse himself to make that inspection.

Was he trying to make port and therefore had he started the engine in preparation for landfall? Had it refused to start? Or had it started and then stopped, with something fouling the prop? Had he then hastily stowed the sails, deployed the ladder-fender and stripped off his clothes to take a look at the stern gear?

An imminent post-mortem may establish the cause of death but might not reveal what happened beforehand.

From the Marie Celeste to the Teignmouth Electron, Avrio is likely to join the long list of maritime mysteries which involve a surviving craft but no surviving crew. I hope I’m wrong.

My condolences go out to his family.

THIS MONTH… I will be in isolation on the marsh .... fitting out Betty II from next week

Having left Grenada, the boat was next seen, adrift and not under command