The Irish polar exploration yacht Northaboutsaved two French sailors in a difficult mid-Atlantic rescue yesterday.
The 14m aluminium yacht, which is best known for undertaking the first westward circumnavigation by a small craft of the North Pole, was crossing the Atlantic with six Irish crew when it received a distress call yesterday.
It picked up a signal from a Belfast yacht Avocet, which had in turn received a distress call from a French yacht Nevee. The French vessel had lost its steering gear in heavy weather and was sinking.
The location for the incident was given as 15 degrees north and 46 degrees degrees west, about 800 miles east of Barbados.
The Irish yacht, skippered by Mayo man Jarlath Cunnane, diverted to the area, and managed to locate the two French crew - a man and a woman - in their life raft.
The pair, Gilbert Brun and Marie Rose Haufman, had experienced two days of severe weather, and were encountering swells of up to three metres when the storm eased. They had been forced to cut the rope tying the life raft to their vessel when it began to go under.
Such was the extent of the swell in the area that it took the Irish crew five attempts to pluck the two survivors from their inflatable.
The pair are now safely on Northabout, which is continuing its passage from the Canaries to Grenada. It is expected to arrive in about a week.
On board with skipper Cunnane were Paul Gannon, Kevin Rowley and Rory Casey, all from Castlebar, Co Mayo, and Gary Finnegan and Richard Phelan from Dublin.
This is the second rescue which Northabouthas carried out during its many voyages.
In September 2004, Cunnane, Paddy Barry of Dublin, and an Irish crew rescued a Dutch yacht with a lone sailor on board in pack ice off northern Russia during their successful voyage through the North-East passage.Cunnane and crew were decorated for this, and he also received the prestigious Blue Water medal for Northabout's achievements in completing a 6,000-mile circumnavigation of the North Pole in 2005.
The ice-strengthened boat, built by Cunnane in Co Mayo, had initially traversed the North-West passage north of Canada and Alaska and through the Arctic ocean in just one season - roughly 100 years after Norwegian Roald Amundsen was the first man to do so in two seasons.
Having left the vessel in Alaska, the crew then decided to take the long way home in July 2004, when they attempted an even more challenging voyage through the North-East passage. They sailed successfully across the top of Siberia in 2004, but ran into pack ice shortly before Cape Chelyuskin, mainland Russia's most northerly point.
The yacht was stored in Siberia, and the crew panel of 18 risked ice, weather, polar bears and other hazards to finish the journey in 2005.