Durban North sailor shares story of rescue by NSRI off Eastern Cape coastline

A DURBAN North resident has described his ordeal after being adrift at sea for six hours after the sailing yacht he was on collided with a submerged object.

Sean Fennessy was among a crew of four on the sailing yacht, Tipsy, when the accident occurred on Friday evening, May 24.

The Point Yacht Club members were returning from East London after the completion of the Vasco da Gama Ocean Race.

The race sees competitors sail from Durban to East London.

The crew were rescued by the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) on Saturday and had earlier reported that the yacht was taking on water and sinking off-shore of the Eastern Cape Coastline (the former Transkei) near Hluleka.
The life raft the sailors huddled into drifted for 20km close to Mdumbi before they were rescued, and thankfully, all of the crew were safe and uninjured despite being a bit cold and thirsty.

The yacht washed ashore the same day, however, any salvageable items were stolen by the time rescuers got to the vessel.

“The incredible part of the story was I wasn’t in the race. One of the crew who sailed from Durban to East London was emigrating and needed her car driven down, and I volunteered to do that. I drove down and planned on hitching a ride back on the yacht. We left the mooring on Thursday around lunchtime, but it was Friday evening when we hit something very hard. I just remember feeling the impact and the sound.

“I was in one of the cabins down below listening to a podcast. I ran out the cabin and could hear the skipper on watch shouting for us to check the floorboards. It all got a bit frantic in minutes, and we discovered the yacht was taking on a lot of water. I called mayday, and one of the other crew members got on the phone to the NSRI. We then readied the inflatable life raft, and it was then that I noticed the back of the boat was fully submerged. We were able to get into the raft before the yacht sank,” he said.

The crew made use of a capsize bottle, a waterproof container that stores hand flares, a flare gun and other items.

“We all just put our phones and personal items we could salvage into the container. Luckily, the sea conditions weren’t too rough, and we could see the coastline from the raft. I think we were about 3km from the coastline. After about five minutes in the raft, we saw a set of flashing lights, and we thought, surely that can’t be the rescue team already. We fired off a flare only to realise it was people on shore.

“We drifted for close to six hours and were in constant contact with the NSRI. I must say it would have been much harder to find us without our cellphones as we kept dropping pins for them to locate us. The NSRI rescue boat had to travel from Port Edward which was around 120km away, and when they got to us, we were grateful to be off the raft as we drifted close to the shoreline and some jagged rocks,” he said.

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