Irish sailor: ‘We’ve been given a second chance at life’

On Tuesday, Irishman Nick Dwyer and his partner Barbara were clinging to each other inside an upside down cabin while waves the size of buildings slammed against the hull of their capsized yacht. Three days later they are sitting on the deck of a yacht in the peaceful surroundings of Sydney harbour watching the sun set on the horizon.

Mr Dwyer, an experienced sailor and former member at the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, truly believed his life was about to end when his boat was tossed upside down by a three-story high wave earlier this week.

“We were just holding on to each other, we were terrified. Everything went into slow motion. We were thinking, this is how it’s all going to end.”

Mr Dwyer and his French partner Barbara Heftman had been sailing the 2,500 kilometres across the Tasman Sea from New Zealand to Australia as part of a decade long sailing adventure around the world when their yacht ran into severe weather conditions on Tuesday.

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Portugal

The trip began in 2008 when Mr Dwyer bought a yacht in Portugal using savings from years working in London and embarked on a solo adventure across the Atlantic. Growing up sailing around Dun Laoghaire harbour, Mr Dwyer is an experienced sailor and was not fazed by the prospect of spending a month alone at sea.

Following his trip across the Atlantic he spent a few months sailing around the Caribbean before setting off on a second solo voyage from Panama to French Polynesia. He was on his way to the island of Niue in the South Pacific Ocean when he encountered a class 1 cyclone or what he describes as "my first real storm".

“When you live on board a boat and don’t go into marinas but drop an anchor in remote places, you end up meeting people who have been living on boats for years and after a while you develop this mass of knowledge and become a lot more competent in handing storms.”

Tonga

After meeting his partner Barbara in Tonga, the couple continued their maritime journey around the islands of the south pacific onwards to New Zealand. On February 15th, 2017 they set off across the Tasman Sea en route, they hoped, back to Ireland.

“Before you go on a voyage like that you study the weather and wait for a period of time when it’s suitable. We left New Zealand in really good weather and were just 350 miles away from Sydney when we saw a low system coming up from the south. It didn’t look too bad and based on what the weather forecasters were saying it was nothing we couldn’t cope with.”

Two days before the bad weather arrived the boat’s rudder broke. After studying the pilot charts, the couple determined they would be able to sail the rest of the way without a rudder by relying on wind movement. However, things changed when the winds began to howl.

“If you don’t have any rudder you can’t steer the boat properly. We had a tiny sail up but there were massive waves and screaming winds. It was very threatening. We were getting smashed by waves in all directions.”

“When you’re out there and its chaos and everything is white, sometimes you look out and it feels like you’re looking down from a three story building. We were being tossed around like we were nothing.”

The couple took shelter in the aft cabin, or sleeping quarters, of the yacht and tried to rest as the winds continued to howl. “You’ve got so much adrenalin pumping through you and it’s a life threatening situation so you can’t sleep. The boat is being thrown around, you’re always on guard.”

Suddenly the pair felt the boat flip over 180 degrees and capsize. “We were just sitting there holding on to each other while the boat was upside down. Either there was going to be a burst of water into the cabin and that would be the end of us or the boat would turn the right way up.”

After what Mr Dwyer estimates was between 5 and 10 seconds the boat turned upright and the couple ventured out to assess the damaged. “The boat had a lot of water so we just instinctively bailed the water out manually for about an hour and a half.”

Distress signal

Over the next six hours the boat was knocked on its side two times. Eventually the couple decided to call for help and used an Epirb (emergency position-indicating radiobeacon station) to send out a distress signal.

“When you pull the Eprib, all the resources from land will be sent to your assistance and people will put your lives at risk to save you so you don’t do that lightly. Pulling that epirb is the most selfish thing you can do.”

A nearby merchant ship picked up on the distress signal and positioned itself alongside the yacht to lessen the force of the waves while the pair waited for help. It took ten hours for the police rescue vessel, Nemisis, to sail from Sydney out to the spot where the yacht was stranded. The couple finally arrived back in Sydney unhurt on Wednesday night.

Mr Dwyer immediately emailed his family in Dublin who had been notified of the emergency a few days previously. He and Ms Heftman are now staying on board the yacht of a friendly stranger in Sydney while they figure out their next steps.

Continue

They say the terrifying experience has not deterred them from continuing their adventure and they hope to retrieve the yacht and bring it back to Ireland.

Mr Dwyer's sister has set up a JustGiving fundraising page in the hopes of raising enough money to rescue the yacht from the Tasman Sea.

“We really have to decide what we’re going to do now. We’ve been given a second chance at life. I’ve got nothing now but I’ve got my life.”