Plucked from peril, a rescue story

On a serene day last spring in the North Atlantic, a cruise ship named Le Boreal was steaming towards a stop in the Azores when it encountered a lonely vessel, floating aimlessly with no crew, no mast and no apparent destination.

Le Boreal’s crew must have stared down in confusion as the boat—a sailing yacht—drifted past; quickly, they snapped some photos they would later send along when they alerted Portuguese authorities. Though of seagoing calibre, this boat looked tiny next to theirs, and so battered by the North Atlantic elements that its mere ability to float seemed a minor miracle.

What hell, the crew of the ship surely wondered, had it come through? What had become of the people who’d sailed it?

Soon after, Rupert Maundrell would see those photos. The British skipper-for-hire, a sailor who delivers boats for a living, marveled at the images, which had been sent by maritime rescue officials in the Azores and passed through several hands before reaching him.

Somehow, he thought, she had come through. And he shuddered at the memories the sight of the boat triggered.

A few months earlier, Maundrell had survived a high-seas thrashing on this yacht that had knocked out the vessel’s steering and tore its rigging to shreds, putting him and his crew of three in the gravest peril he’d faced in 25 years at sea.

That day, Maundrell and his team had been plucked from the ferocious North Atlantic by Canadian sailors and airmen in a high-stakes rescue that had made fleeting headlines and won plaudits for the daring rescuers—though few at the time knew the full extent of their heroism.

Now, months later, Maundrell was back at work yet struggling with cruel recollections from that battle with the wind and waves. In these pictures, he could see emblazoned on the side of the hull proof that this once-beautiful craft had avoided the fate he feared it suffered. Its name was the Makena, and it was the only boat he’d ever lost. – Full story