An Amazing Rescue in Raging Seas and the Silly Question That Followed

It was one of the most astonishing rescues in the annals of yachting.

On Feb. 9, 1983, during the first BOC Challenge, Jacques de Roux of France turned on the emergency beacon on his satellite tracking device. His boat, Skoiern III, had been streaking at eight knots across the Pacific at 55-degree south latitude. The furious fifties.

It had rolled over in a gale, was dismasted, holed and it had less than four inches of freeboard--the height of the boat’s deck above the water. His radio was silent.

Now the satellite said he was moving about 1 1/2 knots--the speed of the current in that part of the ocean.

Richard Broadhead, 30, alerted by ham radio and given De Roux’s satellite position, turned his boat, Perseverance of Medina, around and beat against near-gales and towering seas across the 300 nautical miles that separated him from Skoiern.

After 67 hours, Broadhead spotted De Roux’s boat. “I put the sails aback and drifted down under his lee,� Broadhead said.

What were the first words spoken?

“What I said sounded a little foolish, I suppose,� Broadhead recalled. “I asked him if he wanted to come aboard Perseverance.�

To which De Roux, exhausted from three days of almost constant bailing to stay marginally afloat, said?

“Well, he looked at me as if I were crazy and said, ‘Yes, of course I do. I’m sinking.’ �