Help Secure a Bright Future for Ali's family

I set out with Ali and Chaps, friends and fellow sailors, to deliver a yacht from Zanzibar to Mafia Island. This is what happened on our third day.We intended to arrive about lunchtime - so nearly made it.

We got under way about 6am, all of us being awake anyway. There were light winds initially, through the sand reef area. Once we got into the Mafia channel the winds and sea picked up quickly. The waves were big slow rollers and Ibis was taking them in her stride. We were having a blast. I have some great video. My only concern was we hadn’t been able to get the centre board down. It’d got stuck. But we were careful to balance the boat and all seemed fine.

Then at about 1130 a simply huge wave struck us on the port quarter and flipped Ibis right over. We fought hard to get her over again. Ali and I balanced on the centre board casing and hauled on a line to pull her up and Chapsie did the same from the rudder. Nothing doing. She tried but wouldn’t come up. Chaps dived under to see what the trouble was. The mast had been driven right through the cabin roof and wedged in the hull. Also since the sail was reefed it was holding water, making it heavy. We tried and tried. But Ibis was sinking and we realised we were going to be in deep trouble very shortly. I told Chaps to get the life jackets but he was on it already, and got our bags with passports etc too. He was an absolute hero, diving over and over. We also grabbed a plastic bag floating by which contained 3 tomatoes, a cucumber and an onion!!

Then Ibis disappeared beneath the waves and we were on our own. Ali was shivering already which worried me enormously but I said nothing. We were 10kms off the coast of Mafia Island and I knew we had a fight on our hands. I thanked God for my Naval training. I also didn’t mention I had a water bottle in my pack. My first priority was to stress we stay together, so we put on the very substandard life jackets and tied ourselves together. Chaps also was strong and positive, but Ali already showed signs of hypothermia.

Fortunately it was cloudy so at least we didn’t get burned that first day. Ali and Chaps prayed, and I was content to listen. They know I don’t believe in God but I wasn’t going to debate theology right then. I did say, somewhat tongue in cheek, to Chaps saying we could only place our lives in God’s hands, that I felt we could help ourselves too!!

We could just see land as darkness fell. It was going to be a long, uncomfortable night so we shared a tomato, saving more for later. Around 1am we gave Ali one tomato and Chaps and I had the other. I then announced we had water and again we gave most to Ali. He was seriously cold and we were encouraging him to keep going. We took turns towing him and cuddling him to warm him up. Chaps was cold too but I wasn’t too bad. I never thought to be pleased to be menopausal!!!

More than once I could tell by the look in Ali’s eyes that he was telling Chaps to leave him behind. No chance.

Suffice to say, dawn was welcomed enormously. Breakfast was the last sip of water and a few bites of cucumber. The first thing we saw was a little island. We tried swimming to it but the sea was taking us the other way and we realised we were using precious energy. So we kept on towards the shore.

Between us and land was a reef and the tide was going in so no chance of it being a short distance once we’d got through that. Ali was seriously weak and Chaps and I so tired also. I could see the massive crazy waves leaping on the edge of the reef and was frightened for us all. I knew this hurdle would be the biggest of our test for life so far.

Chaps and I tried to decide how best to get through. He suggested putting Ali on his back but, for better or worse, I vetoed that. Who knows if it’d have made a difference. I had tried swimming on my back but found if a wave swamped me it went straight up my nose and into my lungs. Somehow, the body seemed to cope better front on. Ali had already swallowed too much seawater.

So we tried to lever him off the water as much as possible with the life jacket and my wee backpack. Then Chaps towed him and I swam alongside, holding him up and begging him to hold on. We just went for it, as fast as we could.

But after a time Ali’s face kept laying in the sea and I couldn’t hold him. I yelled for Chaps to help and he came beside me. You can imagine our desperation. Ali panicked and tried to climb on top of Chaps. I learned about this in training and got behind him and pulled him off, trying to calm him. Chaps told him to relax and trust us. It was as if Ali heard us and made a decision of his own. He went floppy and his face went under. We tried to pull him up, so exhausted ourselves. Chaps was pleading with him not to leave us. But he died there in that thrashing sea, in our arms. It is no small thing to watch a healthy young man die. My heart broke for his family and Chaps, his cousin.

For me, the next few minutes were cruel and play on my mind. Chaps wanted to be with Ali, saying prayers as is their custom, and hold him. I had to be firm with him and say we must keep towing him or drown ourselves. We needed to get out of that maelstrom. I had to get him to come next to me, with Ali’s body between us, and help me swim us out of there.

We made it through that biggest part of the reef. So so weary. Chaps spotted a buoy. We swam to it and untied the two buoys attached to the line, resecuring the line to a floating container Ali had round his neck, with bufti in it!! We didn’t want the fisherman who owned it to lose out. Chaps was cold and I knew shock was setting in on us both. I wasn’t really cold so Chaps climbed onto the buoys to get his torso out of the water and I swam beside him. We made the decision to let Ali go, in his life jacket, and let the tide take him into shore. Chaps reckoned it was about 11am so we’d been in the water for 24 hours.

It took us till 5pm to reach the beach. We’d shouted and whistled but no one heard us. We came out of the water slowly, in case our legs failed us. Chaps made me walk behind him, a precaution against standing on something nasty. Such a good man.

But the fact remained, only two of us made it home.