Boeing 777 Rescues Sailboat

Okay, so the headline might be a bit fantastic but the story is very real. On October 3, Australian Glenn Ey, 44, set off singlehanded from Pittwater, just north of Sydney, on a cruise of the eastern coast of Oz aboard his Cavalier 36 Streaker. All was well — "It was beautiful, really," Ey said of the weather — until a southeasterly gale blew up toward the end of his second week. Not wanting to get caught inshore during a gale, Ey heaved to and set Streaker on an offshore course. Mid-day on October 14, Ey said "a huge wave came along, picked me up and just rolled me over." He recalled sitting on his settee one moment, smashing into the overhead the next, and then landing on the table. "It all happens very quickly and it’s most unpleasant."

With the companionway door torn off in the rollover, water flooded into the boat. "Everything was just floating around and I was up to my knees in water," Ey said. "I put my head up and the mast was down. It was in three pieces." That’s enough to tempt even the saltiest sailor to set off his EPIRB, but Ey spent the next 36 hours cleaning up the mess and bailing out the boat. He initially tried to bring the largest piece of the mast aboard to set up a jury rig but the conditions were so severe he was concerned it might hole the boat. In the end, he jettisoned the whole lot. "Your first priority is survival," he told an interviewer who asked why he didn’t immediately set off his beacon. "If your boat is holed, you’re going down and an EPIRB won’t save you then."

Believing he was about 100 miles offshore, Ey spent the next day or so trying to make his way to Sydney — under power when conditions had calmed and under a jury rig he set up with his spinnaker pole. Then he ran out of fuel and realized that a strong current had pulled him farther out to sea than he’d originally presumed. At 8:15 a.m. on October 16, Ey set off his EPIRB. 

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) requested two commercial flights to divert and search in the vicinity of the signal about 270 miles off Sydney. Ey had not registered his EPIRB so they had no information other than the location. An Air Canada Boeing 777 was first on the scene and it wasn’t long before sharp eyes onboard spotted the stricken Streaker. A later Air New Zealand flight confirmed the sighting, and a merchant vessel diverted to the boat’s location to stand by while awaiting the New South Wales water police for rescue.

Ey was not injured during his ordeal and, unfortunately, Streaker is still adrift in the Tasman Sea. He says he doesn’t plan to go to sea again anytime soon — "I’d be quite happy to sit under a tree for a while," he said — but when he does, manufacturer GME will give him a properly registered GPS-enabled EPIRB for the trip. If you haven’t registered your EPIRB, there’s no time like the present. We’ll even make it easy and provide a link!