Sailor, 80, rescued in remote south
VALPARAISO, Chile: An American sailor rescued in the remote South Pacific isn’t ruling out another effort to navigate alone around the tip of South America.
After all, he’s tried only six times now to achieve the feat, and he’s just 84 years old.
“Age means nothing. What is important is that you are alive, so I don’t worry about numbers. I worry about life. That, I think, is more important,” Thomas Louis Corogin said yesterday after the Chilean navy brought him to shore.
Corogin had set sail on December 27 from Easter Island on the last and most difficult part of his attempt to sail around Cape Horn, preparing to weather some of the world’s most dangerous seas.
But then a key piece of rigging snapped.
Corogin did what he could, but the fix would not hold.
In a week of sailing, he had ventured 800km south of Easter Island. Few places on Earth are more remote.
“The backstay broke,” Corogin said, describing the key piece of rigging that runs from the top of the mast to the stern, keeping the sails trim.
“I did temporary repairs with rope, but they would only last a short time and the mast would come down, so I could not sail and the tiller was locked in with the wreckage,” he said.
“I could not steer the boat, and the boat could no longer sail.”
Frustrated and physically exhausted, Corogin activated his distress signal.
The Chilean navy confirmed it with the US Coast Guard and then contacted the Japanese merchant ship White Kingdom, which headed toward his location.
A Chilean search and rescue plane quickly took off and, after refuelling on Easter Island, spotted the 32-foot sailboat the next day, 3 200km from Valparaiso. – Sapa-ap