Marlborough worker saved from capsized boat (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Marlborough worker saved from capsized boat

9:00am Friday 3rd February 2012 in Marlborough By Nigel Kerton

Editorial assistant Aodhán Kelly, who works in Marlborough, has told how he swam to safety after the boat in which he was trying to break a world record capsized.

Mr Kelly, 26, was among the crew of six transatlantic rowers who had to be rescued after their boat the Sara G turned over in stormy waters 27 days into a bid to row across the Atlantic.

Irish international rower Mr Kelly, who works for publishing firm Adam Matthew Digital in London Road, lives in Reading with his girlfriend.

He told Irish TV station RTE he was in the cabin of the Sara G when it filled with water.

He said he had been hoping the boat would right itself and when it didn’t he “realised there was a small pocket of air to his right” which he used. He then “made a break for it”.

He pushed floating debris out of the way and swam out of the cabin. “Eventually, disorientated, I found my way to the surface,” he said.

He and his five British companions ran into trouble as they neared the end of their gruelling row from Morocco to Barbados in the 36ft craft.

They were 27 days into the row with only another 520 miles to go when their boat turned turtle and they had to use their satellite phone to put out a Mayday call and were rescued 14 hours later.

They were taking part in a transatlantic race called the Atlantic Odyssey and its website said the men were picked up from their life raft by the Panamanian flagged cargo ship Nord Taipei.

He said the team are in good spirits. “But it is a hard pill to swallow, especially when we were only six days away from the other side. We had rowed well over 2,000 miles and we were flying. We were doing really well. It was hard to take at that stage to be honest.”

As well as Mr Kelly, whose family lives in Dublin, the crew included the boat’s captain Matt Craughwell; father-of-four Ian Rowe, 45, from Bedford; Simon Brown, 37, a father of three from Hilperton near Trowbridge; father-of-two Yaacov Mutnikas and documentary-maker Mark Beaumont, 29, from Perthshire.

The British coastguard who received the Mayday call and co-ordinated the rescue said the six British rowers were fit and well after their ordeal. They are being taken to Gibraltar, where they are due to arrive by February 9.

Mr Kelly is a former member of the Irish international rowing team and was headhunted for the crew and before setting off he told the Gazette: “As a rower I’m well used to pushing myself to the limits and beyond, but the Atlantic is something I have never experienced.

“It’s something I’ve felt I had to do for a long time.”

Mr Kelly was raising sponsorship for the children’s charity Plan International and his employers were among his sponsors.

Work colleague Jonathan Mansfield said they had been keeping in touch with Mr Kelly’s progress by Twitter and Facebook although he said there had been no direct contact with the rower.

They spent 14 hours in rough seas before they were eventually rescued by a cargo ship at 1am yesterday.

Mr Kelly’s mother, speaking from the family home in Dublin, said she, her husband John and daughter Roisin, were hugely relieved that Aodhan was safe and well. “Naturally from a parent’s point of view, the whole trip has been nerve-wracking but we didn’t doubt Aodhan was capable of it,” she said.

The day before the capsize Mr Caughwell wrote in a blog the boat had been struggling to make any headway because of “no wind and swells from every direction”.

He added: “Morale is high and we hope for good weather soon but it seems that everything is against us at the moment.”