A sailor from Austria certainly had a different idea of his North Sea trip over the Whitsun weekend: On Whit Sunday, he got into a life-threatening situation in the surf zone off the island of Juist, from which only the sea rescuers from the Borkum station were able to rescue him. They towed him safely to Borkum with the rescue cruiser "Hamburg".
At around 9 p.m., the Wilhelmshaven water police informed the German Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre of the DGzRS about an emergency: a sailor had got stuck with his yacht about one and a half nautical miles northwest of the western end of the East Frisian island of Juist. With the water running out and a north-easterly wind of up to five Beaufort, he became a plaything of the sea in the surf zone north of Haaksgat. The waves, which were up to one and a half metres high, repeatedly hit his ten-metre-long sailing yacht "Azimuth" and threw it onto the concrete-hard sandbank.
"It was a hopeless situation for the sailor. Sooner or later, the surf would have smashed his yacht," says foreman Ralf Brinker with certainty. In the choppy sea, the sea rescuers only managed to pull the distressed vessel into deeper water with the daughter boat after midnight when the water was rising. They then towed the yacht and sailor to Borkum. The Austrian was exhausted, but remained unharmed.
The sea area of the East Frisian Islands requires a high level of knowledge of the area and is considered challenging even among experienced sailors. Time and again, yachts get into difficulties there, especially in the sea channels between the islands.
