‘The water came in the boat like the Niagara Falls’: How a British sailor survived in an upturned yacht for four days

In the Exide Challenger’s small air pocket, 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off Antarctica, he mulled over various survival strategies in his mind. “I mean one of the opportunities I had was to get on a lifeboat and hopefully drift off to Antarctica with the finish line drawn,” he said. “It was a bit ridiculous. You have the cold, you have the storms, you have the vastness of the Southern Ocean.”

But as the hours and days passed, as he was tossed by the powerful waves and he realized the increasing hopelessness of his situation, he prepared himself for death. He told the BBC: “I’m starting to feel like I might have reached the end of the line.”

He quietly divided up the remaining time he felt he had left, setting aside space to reflect on his life. “It was really just a case of looking at the logistics of the situation and kind of finalizing my opinion and cataloging what I was going to think about over the next few hours. I want to devote a lot of time to my wife and my family. I want to devote a lot of time to other aspects of my life, and I closed myself and prepared myself for the last moment.

On January 8, after days of searching, a rescue team discovered the upside-down hull of the Exide Challenger. The team had already found and rescued their rival Dubois, who also survived despite the horrific conditions. But on Bullimore’s boat they could not see any clear signs of life.

Rescuers

Lying in complete darkness inside the upturned yacht, Bullimore heard the plane flying overhead. He knew that the plane would not be able to transport him, and that he could not risk leaving the boat if he was not sure that he had a chance of being rescued. He knew that if he swam out of the Exide Challenger, he would not be able to get back in and would drown or freeze to death in the treacherous waters of the Southern Ocean.

In the early hours of January 9, the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Adelaide reached the capsized Exide Challenger and sent a crew in a dinghy to determine if the sailor was still alive. Bullimore told the BBC that he was thrilled when he first heard rescuers tapping on the ship’s hull and then their voices. The noise and screaming started again. “It was my chance. I was waiting for it. It was the door, the gate, the window. It opened a little and it was up to me to get through it. No need to wander around,” he said.

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Filled with a wave of adrenaline, he dove into the icy waters of the boat and swam through the darkness out from the bottom of the yacht. “It took me just seconds to get to the other end of the yacht, seconds to dive off the yacht and get on, and there was Adelaide.”

the Rescue crew I spotted it on the other side of the Exide Challenger as it surfaced on the ocean surface. So they raced over him and took him out of the ocean. Weak but alive. When they placed him on the floor of the boat, they covered him with insulating blankets. “I think someone had a spare jacket and stashed it under my head as a little pillow and said, ‘You’re all right, mate.'” He was almost overcome with gratitude for his rescuers. He recalled to the BBC that an Australian naval crewman was “taking care of me like a baby, talking, “You know, and everything was fine, and I kissed him on the beard.”