4.3 Reading  (Page 2/5)

“It’s a miracle! It’s an absolute miracle!” he said through cracked lips as he was taken aboard the frigate.

Only later would Tony find out he’d spent four full days bobbing about in the hostile vastness of the Southern Ocean. And the world shared his amazement at his miraculous rescue.

The yacht had been sailing in fine weather for four days. In the still air the blue water of the Southern Ocean was as smooth as a millpond.

To Tony Bullimore, one of 10 participants in the gruelling Vendee Globe single-handed around-the-world race, it was a welcome relief from the storm that had raged earlier.

He used the opportunity to dry his clothes and tidy the equipment aboard his yacht Global Exide Challenger. Once again he could cook up one of his favourite meals – a delicious hot curry.

But although he took things easier than he’d been able to during the storm, he didn’t relax completely. The waters he was in, south of latitude 50o S, had a reputation for sudden storms.

So when the wind suddenly came up late in the afternoon on Sunday January 5, Tony was ready.

Without a weather fax and with the satellite equipment broken during an earlier storm, he had to rely on an old salt’s technique of “smelling” the weather.

And what he smelled wasn’t good.

Within an hour the wind was howling at 60 knots and the yacht began to roll wildly in the huge swells. But still he wasn’t worried.

“I got it going beautifully,” he said later. “Bare poles (no sails), lashed everything down, got everything tucked away down below and put every-thing in such a position I could be chucked from one side of the boat to the other without damage.”

But he was drinking a cup of tea when disaster struck.

“I was sitting there with my cup of tea and then–bang! The keel popped off.”

The boat immediately rolled, leaving Tony trapped in the cabin inside the upturned hull.

Things weren’t too bad for him during the night. But in the early hours of the morning disaster struck again – one of the portholes was smashed and icy water poured through it. In seconds Tony was up to his shoulders in water.

His first priority was to make a hammock to lie in so he could keep himself out of the icy water. Feeling around in pitch darkness he found a piece of cargo netting. For the next few fateful days it would be his only haven.

“I had to find a spot as high as possible. The smashed porthole was acting like a vacuum. It sucked everything out of the boat. It was quite amusing,” he recalls. The swells sloshed the water around inside the boat and it was impossible to stay dry. Even in his R5 000 survival suit, with its four layers of protective material, Tony was chilled to the bone.

Many times had had to brave the cold water and get out of his hammock, mainly to see to the life raft on the deck, now below the surface of the water.

“I was afraid that if it was adrift and anyone came across it they’d just look and say, ‘Ah, it’s all finished’ and any rescue would be abandoned.”

To ensure the life raft was lashed tightly, he had to dive into the water, swim through the entrance into the cockpit and onto the deck.