MOB at the Silverrudder 2026: Almost too late – what emerged after the rescue

​During the Silverrudder 2026, a sailor fell overboard from his Beneteau First 18 SE in pitch-black darkness and was dragged behind his own boat for more than an hour. He survived. When we interviewed him shortly after his discharge from hospital, he himself did not yet know all the details of his rescue. Since then, fellow sailors, sea rescue workers and organiser Philip Cossen have been in touch with the editorial team – and the picture of that night has been pieced together.

Mayday just before midnight

For the past 15 years, the Silverrudder in September Hundreds of sailors from all over the world head to Svendborg – a solo regatta with cult status, a community that reunites year after year.

The weather briefing ahead of the start of the 15th edition sounded challenging but manageable: weather forecaster Juri Jehrmann predicted fresh to strong winds with gusts of up to 30 knots, whilst the Danish weather model predicted winds of up to 35 knots in places from a west-south-westerly direction. The committee gave the go-ahead for the start. Nevertheless, numerous experienced skippers decided, on their own initiative, not to start.

Matija – who does not wish to have his surname published in the newspaper – sailed his Beneteau First 18 SE “Taormina” into the conditions. For nine years, he’d kept his handheld radio stowed away somewhere on the boat. That evening, he carried it in the pocket of his racing jacket for the first time. It was the decision that would save his life.

The full interview with Matija can be read under the title ‘Mayday at Midnight’. What wasn’t mentioned there was how the rescue unfolded from the perspective of the other people involved. Matija asked the editorial team to help him get in touch with his rescuers. Since then, several of those involved have been in touch with us.

The volunteer sea rescuers from Juelsminde held their own debriefing on Tuesday after the race. Matija rang one of the men personally to thank him. “That means a great deal to the volunteers,” writes the head of operations. And: “Hopefully with a voice that sounds very different from the one filled with agonising despair that I heard that night.”

And she was right to be concerned. Because – as Matija was only to learn during his conversation with the sea rescue team – by the time of the rescue, his skin had already taken on a greyish-white hue. An unmistakable sign of severe, life-threatening hypothermia.

​Organiser Philip Cossen is visibly moved the day after the incident. He says he has spoken personally with Matija and others involved.

In principle, anyone can take part in Silverrudder – provided the boat is seaworthy and the skippers meet the safety requirements. These are clearly defined: life jackets must be worn at all times, and safety harnesses, lifelines, VHF radio, flares, torches, knives, anchors, first-aid kits and fire extinguishers are all part of the compulsory equipment. The Safety Committee expressly reserves the right to exclude smaller boats from the start if the wind is too strong.The safety chain worked – but he has announced that he will evaluate the race in detail and seriously examine how safety can be improved, for example through mandatory PLBs. One thing is important to him: the Silverrudder is deliberately a regatta for everyone – affordable and without complicated rules. He also points out a regulatory peculiarity: in Denmark, a PLB must be registered, which requires a VHF radio certificate and a radio station licence – an additional hurdle for many participants. “So we need to look at the options first,” he says.

“My heart sank” – that night as seen by other participants

Koos van der Zee, who is writing from Denmark, was sailing his Bianca 107 ‘Isella’ north of Æbelø that night. He described what he experienced to the editorial team in two vivid emails:

“I heard the emergency call at around 11 pm. The voice on the radio left no room for doubt: this was serious. One of the other participants, with a German accent, immediately relayed a Mayday call to the emergency services.

I quickly realised that the man who’d fallen overboard was probably somewhere nearby. A handheld radio only has a limited range – I knew that if I could hear him, he wasn’t far away. I started the engine, took down the sails, grabbed a torch and began searching.

After a short while, I spotted something shiny in the darkness and headed towards it. As I got closer, I realised it was an inflated life jacket. For a brief moment, I felt an enormous sense of relief – convinced that I had found the sailor alive. That feeling vanished immediately when I realised that the life jacket was empty. My heart sank.

At that point, none of us realised that the sailor was still attached to the boat – being dragged along behind it. I passed on the coordinates of the life jacket to the emergency services, who had arrived in the meantime.

Before long, lifeboats, a helicopter and even a merchant ship had joined the search. Powerful searchlights swept across the water. Visibility was poor, communication was difficult, and the combination of darkness, wind and waves made everything seem chaotic.

Finally, I heard over the radio that the sailor had been found and that they were wrapping him in blankets. Those few words brought me enormous relief. If they were wrapping him up, he was alive.

For me, the race was now over. Whilst securing the sails on the foredeck, I slipped and dislocated my shoulder. After some struggle, I managed to get back into the cockpit, set the autopilot for Bogense and began the long and uncomfortable journey back to the harbour. About 45 minutes later, I finally managed to pop my shoulder back into place myself. As I sailed into Bogense, I spotted the yacht belonging to the man who’d had the accident – now moored in the harbour. By about 3 o’clock, I was finally moored."

In a second email, Koos writes:

“What’s been on my mind ever since is that only a few boats seemed to be actively taking part in the search. Of course, I don’t know what the others heard or what situations they themselves were facing on board. Nevertheless, the incident got me thinking: are we, as a sailing community, clear enough about what is expected of us if a realistic search-and-rescue situation arises during a regatta?”

I would encourage everyone to, to watch the TracTrac replay from around 11 pm. It shows just how quickly events unfolded – and how difficult it can be to get a clear picture in the darkness and rough seas.

Offshore sailing places great emphasis on preparation, equipment and seamanship. This experience has reminded me that an equally important factor is our willingness to stand by one another when things go wrong."

Radio communications – chaotic, but life-saving

Max Käkenmeister from Germany – taking part in the Silverrudder for the eighth time, a volunteer firefighter – was there with his Westerly Discus “Takarafune” also travelling north of Æbelø. “It was this totally distorted, crackling ‘I’m in the water, I’m in the water’,” he explains. “Where you think: Is this a joke? Is this real? And then it happened again.”

Matijas’s handheld radio did not have sufficient range to get a clear connection through to the rescue control centre. At least one of the participants sent a Mayday relay to Lyngby Radio. Max used the tracker and race number to determine the boat’s position and pass it on. “I wasn’t thinking about sailing at that moment,” he says. “I was just thinking: ‘What’s the right thing to do now?’” Another sailor alerted the Silverrudder safety team, who immediately contacted Lyngby Radio and repeatedly relayed the position data.

Käkenmeister describes the radio communications as chaotic: “It was all very chaotic on the radio. Messages didn’t always get through, and it was difficult to communicate and understand positions.” Wet fingers, darkness, waves. “Everyone involved tried to do the right thing,” says Käkenmeister. “But you realise just how difficult it all is at the same time – keeping your own boat under control, monitoring the radio, and making decisions.”

In hindsight, one question keeps nagging at him: “Should I have turned round and actively looked for it? I misjudged my own position at that moment.” He couldn’t have gone any slower – the boat would have become uncontrollable in the waves.

A further detail regarding the radio communication later came to light: the helicopter pilot was only able to locate Matija via radio direction-finding at those moments when he was actively operating the device. “If he hadn’t happened to have the radio on him,” says Max, “no one would have realised that someone was being dragged behind his boat.”

The weather: tougher than expected

Weather forecaster Juri Jehrmann had provided a detailed briefing – and yet the race proved tougher than expected for many sailors. Not only in the north of Funen, where the worst conditions had been feared, but at several points along the course. Most boats sailed the last six to eight hours under a jib and a reefed mainsail. Unforeseen rain showers brought gusts of up to 32 knots.

In a debrief with organiser Philip Cossen, Jehrmann admits: “We missed a few rain cells.” These brought gusts of up to 32 knots. In principle, the weather conditions – with the strong west-south-westerly wind – had been manageable, but the Silverruder presents meteorologists with particular challenges: “There are so many nooks and crannies, so many headlands, and so many currents. The wind refraction around the headlands surprises me every time.” Added to this is the extreme diversity of the fleet – ranging from ultra-fast trimarans to slow long-keelers from the 1970s. For next year, Jehrmann and Cossen are considering class-specific weather packages or an app into which sailors can enter their boat’s speed data – so that the weather forecast applies not just to the entire fleet, but to each individual boat.

Patrik Heinrichs – class winner in the Keelboats Small class on his Esse 850 ‘Jynx’ – describes what the conditions were actually like in vivid terms. At the northern tip, the waves were building up to one and a half metres; all his opponents turned off one after the other heading south. He stayed out there. Off Æbelø, a shower cell rolled in: “That did NOT look good.” In the Little Belt, it was then pitch-black night, with a headwind, waves crashing over the boat and increasing shipping traffic: “A few showers of salt water after midnight certainly do the job of keeping you awake instead of coffee.” And finally, in Svendborgsund, more fierce gusts, more unlit buoys: “The wind just wouldn’t let up.”