Canadians found alive after 11 days lost at sea

[Clampet]

December 15, 2007 LONDON, Ont.–Two London, Ont., men missing at sea for 11 days and feared dead after a failed Coast Guard search have been found alive off the coast of South Carolina.

 

Paul Shore and Brock Argyle, both in their 50s, managed to hail a fisherman and get their badly damaged, nine-metre sailboat towed to Georgetown, S.C.

 

The men arrived in Georgetown Thursday but only managed to contact family and friends yesterday.

 

The two men survived a three-day storm with 11-metre high waves and 110 km/h winds but their boat Pride barely did.

 

They spent the next eight days inching the damaged boat to shore, watching one potential rescuer pass by, wondering if anyone would find them. Their food ran out just before they managed to hail a man, their "new best friend," fishing off the coast, Shore said.

 

"I feel much better today. I was able to touch ground, real ground."

 

Shore and Argyle have sailed out of Port Stanley, Ont., for years.

 

"We had been planning this for a long time," said Shore, a hotel and restaurant manager.

 

The two sailors left Delaware for Panama on Nov. 30 and headed out to sea to swing around Cape Hatteras, N.C., when the storm hit.

 

"Things got really hairy, to say the least," Shore said. "I remember we were going down the backside of one swell and I looked up. The other swell coming was taller than my mast."

 

The Pride's mainsail was shredded to half its size. Tangled lines and broken supports for the mast complicated matters. The days blurred.

 

They were to check in with family and friends on Dec. 2, the day they left Norfolk. By Dec. 9, with no word, a friend contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, which used four aircraft and four vessels to scour the ocean from Delaware to Florida. The search was called off Wednesday.

 

Just after noon Thursday, the sailors' eyes fell, with great relief, on a distant smokestack and to the north, some houses and then the fisherman. By 9:30 p.m., they had been towed and were tied to the dock at Georgetown Harbour, S.C. They got a pizza in town and their first real sleep in weeks.

 

None of their phones and computers would work to notify family until yesterday.

 

The Canadian Press

Edited December 16, 2007 by Clamp-It

[Greencoachdog]

Sounds like one of Slowpokes fishin' trips!

[Clampet]

Sounds like one of Slowpokes fishin' trips!

 

[Mike the Pike]

Funny Dog

[camillj]

Great news .. but ... is it just me .. or wouldnt anyone lend these fellas a cell phone so they could call home ... two unnecessary extra days is a heckova long time to wait for a loved one presumed lost at sea.

[Whopper]

Great news .. but ... is it just me .. or wouldnt anyone lend these fellas a cell phone so they could call home ... two unnecessary extra days is a heckova long time to wait for a loved one presumed lost at sea.

 

Something does not sound right about this story