Auckland man saved after yacht sunk by whale

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 3

Auckland man saved after yacht sunk by whale

(New Zealand Press Association)

< AUCKLAND, March 29. “At first I thought I was going to die. By the third day I didn’t care a damn any more,” said Mr C. Cels, of Auckland, last night.

Mr Cels was describing how he drifted in the South Atlantic after a whale smashed his 18ft yacht. Mr Cels, aged 26, flew back to New Zealand on Monday from Ecuador still wearing a pair of trousers he borrowed from his rescuers. At his parents’ home in Sandringham, he told how a cruise of the South Atlantic almost ended in disaster. He left Panama on January 23 to sail his yacht to the Galapagos Islands, 1000 miles away. The trip should have taken only 15 days. “I was 48 days at sea before! sank," he said. “I hit

a huge calm, and drifted in one spot for two weeks.” About 4 a.m. on March 9 Mr Cels was slowly drifting when his yacht bumped into a humb-back whale floating on the surface.

“The whale, which was about 25ft long, lashed out with its tail and split the underside,” he said. “I worked the pumps for abput five or six hours, but the hole in the bottom got wider. “Then the yacht went down suddenly.” Before leaping overboard, Mr Cels managed to grab a plastic case containing the yacht’s log, some papers, and a pint container of water. He abandoned ship about 1 p.m. on March 9 and drifted

for almost three days before being rescued by an Ecuadorian crayfish trawler. “My container of water floated away when I fell asleep while floating in the lifejacket,” Mr Cels said.

“The first day I thought I was going to die. But by the beginning of the third day I just couldn’t give a damn about living or dying. “My tongue was swollen; I was burned on the face and my lips were blistered. “And cold—l was frozen from the neck down.” Mr Cels said he did not think much about anything while floating, except about losing the yacht. “I wasn’t worried about sharks. In fact I didn’t see one during the whole time I was floating.” On March 11 he could hear a boat’s engines. “It was about eight o’clock. The water was like a bathtub, so still. FLARE FIRED “I heard the. engines and fired a pencil flare I had in the lifejacket. When I could see the trawler I fired another flare. “If the water hadn’t been so still, I reckon I’d have had it.” When the Ecuadorean fishermen hauled him aboard their trawler, Mr Cels was wearing only a pair of shorts. According to Mr Cels, the fishermen thought “it was a hell of a joke.” To try to explain how he had been

sunk he tried drawing a whale, but the fishermen thought he had drawn a porpoise. “They thought it was a tremendous joke.” Five days later Mr Cels was put ashore in Guayaquil in Ecuador. "I went to see the British Consul wearing my pair of shorts and the lifejacket,” he said. He cabled his sister, Mrs S. McClusky, of Meadowbank, Auckland, for money for his air fare home. PUT IN GAOL While he was waiting for the money, Mr Cels was locked up by the police for being a vagrant. Fishermen from a British trawler in port bailed him out. Mr Cels, a former Post Office employee, left New Zealand in 1967 to work aboard South African coastal ships. He decided to sail to South America after spending months and $2OOO rebuilding the yacht after someone abandoned it derelict in Cape Town. He spent about a year in Trinidad before sailing to Panama. TO SEA AGAIN Of his last voyage, he said: “It was a lousy end to a lousy trip.” Last night Mr Cels said he wanted to go back to sailing. “I’ll go down to the wharves tomorrow to see what trawlers have got jobs going.”