Luke Watkins fell overboard in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race but lived to tell the tale

 

At 3:30am, Luke Watkins, a 37-year-old crew member of the Porco Rosso, was swept overboard as the yacht sailed in strong winds past Green Cape on the New South Wales coast.

"Then we tipped over …  and then I got pinned to the leeward side of the boat underwater and felt I was taking my last breath when somehow I managed to unclip myself from the boat.”

“When I popped up above the water, the boat was probably 200m in front of me,” Watkins said.

Bobbing in rough seas, in the pitch dark, Watkins said he was able to keep sight of the boat’s stern light for about two or three waves.  “Then they were gone,” he said.

After 10 minutes in the water, he began feeling cold and tried to “keep his thoughts under control”.     “It was pretty rough, getting thrown down waves – it was hard to keep above water a lot of the time.”

While he was trying to stay alive, his crew, as well as a jet dispatched by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and a search and rescue vessel deployed by Eden Water Police, were searching for him.

After half an hour, he spotted a light – Porco Rosso returning.  “That’s when I got my head torch and held it up so they could see where I was.”

Skipper McCartney said his personal locator beacon and light-up safety jacket made it "dramatically" easier to rescue him.  All up, he spent about 45 minutes in the water.

"It took a while to turn the boat round, because we had four sails up, so we had to get two of them down and turn the boat round … so we were about two miles away by the time we turned around to get him," he said.