3 minute read
A Sydney to Hobart competitor who was thrown overboard during a rough night of sailing has described being pinned underwater on the side of his yacht.
A sailor thrown overboard during a deadly Sydney to Hobart yacht race was "on his last breath" after being pinned to the side of his boat underwater.
Porco Rosso crew member Luke Watkins ended up in the water around 3.15am on Friday as the 2013 handicap winner passed Green Cape on the NSW coast in strong winds.
"We went down a rather large wave. The boat went into the trough, hit the back of the wave in front (which) completely washed the deck," Watkins told ABC news.
"Then we tipped over, what we call a Chinese gybe ... and I got pinned to the ... side of the boat underwater.
"I somehow managed to unclip myself from the boat as I could feel I was on my last breath.
"When I popped up above the water, the boat was probably 200m in front of me."
David Jacobs, vice-commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which administers the race, said it was believed Watkins was washed 1.2km away from the boat.
Watkins said he activated his emergency position-indicating radio beacon, "cracked" some glowsticks and turned on a head torch he found in his pocket.
After his life jacket automatically inflated, he tried to huddle up and keep warm.
"After about 10 minutes, I could start to feel myself starting to get a bit cold, so I went into to a bit of a survival pose ... kept my elbows in," he said.
"It was pretty hard to keep yourself above water a lot of the time.
"I swallowed a fair bit of saltwater. Just tried to keep the thoughts under control."
Watkins was rescued by his Porco Rosso crewmates. An aircraft and four-time line honours champion Master Lock Comanche, which had earlier retired, had also been sent to help.
The crew opted to retire at around 4.45am rather than continue into strong-to-gale-force winds in Bass Strait.
Jacobs said the incident would have been "tenfold" times more scary at night.
"Fortunately there are developed systems and procedures to cater for that situation to retrieve the person," he said.
Two competitors were killed on Friday night after they were struck by booms, the large horizontal pole at the bottom of the mainsail, in a separate incidents aboard Flying Fish Arctos and Bowline.
The two yachts have retired from the 628 nautical mile open water race.
"The sailing community is a very close community. There's about a thousand sailors on the water in this race, and to lose two in this fashion is just devastating," Jacobs said.
The deaths were the first in the Sydney to Hobart since the 1998 event, which claimed the lives of six in violent storms and triggered mass reforms to the race's safety procedures.
