bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

HK family, crew plucked from raging seas
What began as a sunny Christmas sailing holiday in the Philippines ended with a dramatic New Year's Eve sea rescue for a Hong Kong family and the crew of their yacht.
Carolyn and Raymond Lee, along with their sons Aaron, 18, and Joe, 16, and three crew members were sailing home  from the Philippines when disaster struck the Purple X, their 49-foot  Oyster yacht.
When they  weighed anchor in Subic Bay on December 29, forecasts were calling for rough weather, but they could not have imagined the 40-knot winds and 7-metre seas awaiting them in the South China Sea.
Their idyllic sailing holiday began to unravel at dawn on New Year's Eve when the Purple X was    about 460km north of the Philippines.
'The mast snapped and fell into the sea, and we had to cut the rigging away. There was nothing to save,' Mrs Lee said by  phone from the  ship that eventually rescued them.
The yacht began to take on water, and the Lees put out a distress call. One ship responded but said it was too big to change course and rescue them.
Marine rescue officials  sent a spotter plane to look for the Purple X as the crew continued sending pleas for help while running the bilge pumps to keep the yacht afloat.
The 109,350-tonne Maersk Princess, a tanker out of Singapore, was sailing from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to Map Ta Phut, Thailand, when it agreed to rescue the  yacht, which was about 90km away from them.
'We had to use flares because the seas were so rough at this point that they couldn't see us, and the spotter plane had to leave because it was running out of fuel,' Mrs Lee said.
The  crew of the  Maersk Princess lowered a small boat into the sea and took Mr Lee and crew members Paul Bayfield and Martin Franks off the yacht. The plan was to have them climb a rope ladder up the side of the towering tanker, but the seas were too rough, forcing the rescuers to attach a line to the boat and lift it from the water by crane.
As the rescue boat was dangling in the air, it smashed against the hull of the ship, injuring one of the rescue crew as well as two of the yachtsmen. Mr Lee received a severe cut to his leg and a broken collarbone, and Mr Bayfield hurt his back.
Aaron and Joe Lee were hauled up in life rings.
'It was getting very perilous at this stage, and they sent two more rings for me and the boat boy [Victor Gordoncillo],' Mrs Lee said.
'But when we jumped off the yacht, it rounded up and was going to crush us against the hull of the ship, so I had to let go of the life ring. I drifted towards the back of the ship and the 11-metre propeller.'
Mrs Lee and Mr Gordoncillo were adrift in the raging  seas.
'We drifted back about 2km, and they lost complete sight of us,' she said. 'It is a horrible, helpless feeling floating away from rescue.'
Eventually they regained visual contact, and the ship began the half-hour process of turning around to retrieve the pair. The rescuers threw lines to them  and pulled them  to the rope ladder.
But the pressure of the sea forced them to let go of the ropes, and they drifted to the stern. 'I actually touched the rudder with my foot, and I thought the boat boy had gone under,' Mrs Lee said. 'His life ring came up in pieces, all mangled.'
She later spotted Mr Gordoncillo, alive and drifting behind her.
By this point, it was late afternoon, light was fading, and Mrs Lee and Mr Gordoncillo had been in the wild waves for three hours.
'We were hanging onto each other, and the ship came back for us again. My life jacket was ruined,  and I was borderline drowning. We managed to grab the life ring, and they dragged us to the ship. They lowered a basket to pull us from the water. It was a huge effort to get into the basket because I was already suffering from hypothermia. We were just starting to lose the light when I got on the ship. Another 10 minutes in the water for me, and it would have been all over.'
The ship's crew took the Purple X's final co-ordinates and left her adrift  before  heading for Thailand.
'The crew could not have been more selfless, heroic or hospitable,' Mrs Lee said, adding that they threw them a delayed New Year's party on New Year's Day.
'We had party games and bingo, and the non-alcoholic beer, to us  hard-drinking sailors, never tasted so good.'
The Maersk Princess arrived in Thailand yesterday, and Mr Lee and Mr Bayfield were taken to a Bangkok hospital for treatment.



Sailing holiday turns into ocean nightmare