Eg Walters recalls rescue from icy Atlantic
After escaping death in the icy Atlantic, St. John’s man appreciates every moment
Dark clouds hovered like troubled souls as a four-person crew, including an adventurer from St. John's, sailed into the night with the sight of Iceland a distant smudge.
The sailors had made the same voyage the previous year in 2003, trying to set a record crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a 10-metre powerboat from Newfoundland to England, refuelling via Greenland, Iceland and Scotland.
They had all confronted some fearful storms in their past, where relentless rollers turn into vertical cliff-faces, carrying vessels high into their peaks and then dropping them deep into its valleys. As experienced sailors, they had approached each one with care and attention, usually passing off with no trouble.
But an hour into the morning in an area known for icebergs and ice sheets, Mother Nature was ready this time to open the gates of hell on them, recalls Egbert Walters, now the general manager of Community Food Sharing Association in St. John's.
“We were 220 miles southeast from Iceland, returning to Newfoundland (in late summer), when we ran into a rogue wave,” says Walters, reliving the horror of gasping for breath in the bone-chilling, salty waters, while holding anything he could find to keep him afloat.
UNFORGETTABLE
It happened 16 years ago in the North Atlantic, but the experience is still vivid in his mind as if it were yesterday.
“The wave tore the nose, the front, off the boat. Alan Priddy showed me how to call for help on my satellite phone because we had a catastrophic boat failure," Walters recalls.
"I knew we were in trouble.”
Walters managed to reach a few contacts and give them their coordinates before the situation worsened. He found himself screaming through the roar and spray, “Mayday, Mayday,” hoping someone would respond to their distress signal.
“Within 10 minutes, we got a callback from the Scottish coastguards that the rescue call had been assigned (through different agencies), and they were dispatching a search-and-rescue mission.”
The sailors, broken by exhaustion, tumbled beneath the breaking waves on the boat, battling the freezing and treacherous waters for eight hours in the darkness before their rescuers were able to reach them.
“I had lost my wife a few months earlier, and my youngest daughter was six. I needed to make it back for her. That is what kept me going. There but for the grace of God, you know,” says Walters, who believes someone (a higher power) was looking after him.
“It was not my time to go. We were all trying to keep our spirits up. One of the
boys went into shock, so I took him up with my arms and legs wrapped around him when the helicopter came. He would have been dead otherwise. He would have fallen into the ocean.”
HARROWING RESCUE
Walters compares the rescue to a Michael Jackson music concert.
“It was surreal, with the lights from the helicopter in the fog and mist, the reflectors on the rescuer's suit coming down to hoist us up,” he says. His mind downplayed the severity of the situation if only a moment.
At the same time, the boat became lost to the sea.
But the helicopter didn't have enough fuel to make it to shore and had to find a Royal Navy vessel to refill before taking the sailors to Stornoway in Scotland.
“At their Royal Air Force base, we had a debrief by local police and Royal Navy,” says Walters.
The rescuers put them up at a hotel, washed their clothes, and bought them all
new boots because their shoes could not dry.
“All this was free because it is a search-and-rescue charity, but we decided to pay for our hotel, meals and make a successful donation because we were so thankful for their work with people in distress out at sea. Later, we continued to raise funds for this charity.”
GIVING BACK, BEING GRATEFUL
Walters, since cheating death, went back out to sea, but this time to help disadvantaged youth from Australia with week-long sailing adventures.
“It's like when you fall off a horse's back. You have to get back on, or else you never will,” says Walters.
And, he notes, sailing has been a “passion in his family” for generations.
He has never stopped giving back, contributing to society, and living a purposedriven life, knowing all too well how precious and fragile it can be.
“I remember I was complaining with my good friend about the miserable weather. An elderly man shuffling along, probably from a previous stroke, out of the blue, said, ‘any day you are alive is a good day. It is just some days are better than others.'”
This advice stuck with Walters, even when his seafaring adventures came to their conclusion because of Parkinson's disease.
“I get up in the morning and throw my feet over the bed and do the best I can," he says.
"When I crawl to bed at night, I say, ‘thank you, Lord, for helping through the day. Please give me the strength to get through tomorrow.'”
There are two essential things to keep in mind through life, says Walters: faith and trust.
“You put your life in someone else's hands when you are trying to get a short nap on a boat. At the same time, when you are up there keeping lookout, you have to understand the amount of trust that person has below sleeping has in you.”
Walters accepts his circumstances with Parkinson's disease and every day goes to work to help collect and distribute donated food to low-income families. He says he knows it is making a difference keeping someone fed – and alive – for one more day.
“I have a good friend who I have been hunting and fishing with for the past 30 years. He is 85, gets up, cuts wood, plants potatoes. He inspires me to keep going," says Walters.
"There is a 14-year difference between us. I do not think I will last as long as him, but I'm going to give it a good try.”
He offers some final sage words on human perseverance and triumph: “Play the hand you're dealt."
He adds, "We can not choose our circumstance, but we can certainly keep a positive attitude because the only difference between a rough and groove is how you look at it.”