In distress at sea: Rescue drama for Danish solo skipper in the Indian Ocean
Morten Strauch
· 19.10.2022
After six years in the Seychelles, Kim Johansen was slowly heading back home to Denmark. The first planned stop was the Yemeni island of Socotra, around 125 nautical miles east of the Horn of Africa, where he wanted to meet up with friends to sail into the Red Sea in a small flotilla.
Two additional deckhands were originally planned for the 1,000 nautical miles through the Indian Ocean, but no agreement could be reached on the price, so Johansen ultimately decided to set sail alone.
On the morning of 10 September 2022, Kim Johansen set sail from Victoria on Mahé in his Bavaria 47 and set his genoa on a northerly course. To avoid having to work unnecessarily hard on deck alone, he decided to forego the mainsail. Everything went according to plan for the first two days with excellent visibility and moderate winds. What then followed was a chain of unfortunate circumstances reminiscent of the film "All Is Lost", in which Robert Redford finds himself increasingly in distress at sea.
On the third night, the wind and swell increase to such an extent that the genoa is shredded. Johansen starts the engine and motors until dawn, but then sets the main at daylight. Two hours later, the mainsail comes down- The shackle of the halyard is broken, and the halyard end is stuck at the top of the masthead, out of Johansen's reach under these circumstances.
The engine is started again and Johansen decides to continue on to Socotra with the wind and current instead of heading back to the Seychelles with the wind and current against him. The engine is now the only remaining aid, but the experienced skipper remains calm and maintains his engine at regular intervals. He is far from thinking about distress at sea.
Alone at night with a torch and knife under the pounding boat
After another day and a half, he hears, again at night, that the propeller is no longer turning. So 60-year-old Johansen ties a rope around himself and, armed with a torch and knife, dives under his boat, which repeatedly rises and falls alarmingly in the metre-high waves. However, he manages to free the propeller from the seaweed, pull himself onto the boat unharmed and set off again.
On 17 September, once again in the middle of the night, the engine gave up with gearbox damage. The Bavaria 47 finally becomes a plaything of the angry sea with waves up to five metres high. Knowing that he is in a high-risk area, not far from the Somali coast, notorious for brutal pirate attacks, Johansen sends out a mayday message. He also reaches the Danish coastguard via satellite phone, who make contact with the US Navy, but there is no ship nearby to rescue him from his distress at sea. After nine long hours in a spin, the car freighter "MV Neptun" responds to his distress call, but due to the weather and its 30 metre high side, it is unable to help but remains on standby. Two hours later, the tanker "MS Riviera II" finally responds, arriving at the distressed vessel after a further five hours and immediately initiating rescue operations.
In the video, Johansen tearfully recounts how he prepared for his rescue and how the thought of his children helped him to never give up. During the rescue, the Dane injured his foot and leg and lost his grab bag containing his cash, passport, computer and phone. The Filipino crew took great care of him and provided him with medicine, clothing and food. When he left the tanker in India, the crew even gave him 500 US dollars that they had collected for him. This was followed by an official odyssey ashore until he finally arrived by plane via Helsinki, Copenhagen and Ålborg in his home town of Nibe on the Limfjord.
Kim Johansen is still in contact with the captain of the tanker. This was the second time in his career that the Filipino captain has rescued a sailor from distress at sea.
