It wasn't so long ago that two women were in charge, Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba, They caused an international sensation when they were rescued 900 nautical miles from Japan after a five-month odyssey across the Pacific. Now the stories of two other sailors are travelling around the world: the Polish Zbigniew Reket and the Australian Kris Larsen. Like the two Americans, they also drifted helplessly across the sea in their boats for weeks, even months.
Zbigniew Reket had actually only wanted to sail from the Comoros to South Africa. However, shortly after his start, the rudder of his lifeboat, which had been converted into a sailing boat in India, apparently broke. This was followed by a drift that took him across the Indian Ocean and back again. He had no technical aids on board to draw attention to his predicament. He lived off packet soups, fish he had caught himself and rainwater he had collected. At least Reket had company: a cat had run into him in the Comoros shortly before take-off.
On Boxing Day last year, Reket was lucky: the crew of another yacht spotted the shipwrecked man and called for help. The Pole was then towed to La Réunion by the French coastguard. There he quickly became a hero, albeit a tragic one. Since then, he has given numerous interviews about his odyssey.
The rescue of the shipwrecked Pole Z. Reket
Australian Larsen's boat is not a conventional yacht either. His "Kehaar Darwin" is a self-built vessel with a junk-like rig. He wanted to sail it from Panama to Down Under, but apparently lost his bearings completely. According to the US Coast Guard, which recently rescued the man off Hawaii, he did not have any navigational instruments, radio equipment or even an engine on his boat. According to his own account, he had already been at sea for over 100 days.
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
