Douglas Robertson’s dad was on the verge of bankruptcy when deciding to sell his farm and buy a boat – a decision which very nearly killed his family.
Douglas Robertson was 18 years old when his father announced he was selling the family farm to buy a boat.
Dad Dougal was struggling on the verge of bankruptcy, so he decided to pack up his wife and his children and take them sailing around the world. But what started off as an exciting adventure ended in horror when the boat sank and the family spent nearly six weeks adrift in a tiny dinghy.
Former maritime captain Dougal, then 47, was the only one with any sailing experience – Douglas, his mum Lyn, sister Anne, 19, and twin brothers Neil and Sandy, 12, were novices. They left Falmouth in 1971 on board the Lucette, a 43ft schooner – and sailed straight into a storm. Everyone learned the ropes fast.
Now 61, Douglas tells The New Day the incredible story of their survival.
My dad had been a farmer for 15 years, but we couldn’t even pay the electricity bills.
One day he decided we should change our lives. He could have had a midlife crisis or an affair but instead, he sold up, bought the Lucette and took us around the world.
Dad had experience of big boats, but no small vessel experience. We sailed all the way through the Caribbean, Jamaica, Panama and spent three weeks in the Galapagos Islands.
For me, at 18, it was great fun. I remember my Dad standing on the deck and screaming ‘yee-haa’ then a wave came across the bow and soaked us all. Neil and Sandy fell about laughing. But after over a year at sea, 200 miles from the nearest land, disaster struck. A pod of killer whales circled the yacht and starting barging us, thinking we were a whale.
The blows were like sledgehammers smashing into the hull. We began to sink. Water was everywhere and I was terrified. All I could hear was Dad shouting, ‘Abandon ship!’ I called back, ‘Where to? We’re in the middle of the ocean.’ He shouted, ‘Overboard man! Get in the raft.’
Everything was a blur. Mum was caught in the rigging of the sinking yacht and I was in the water trying to fix a hole in the lifeboat thinking, ‘I’m going to die.’ Killer whales were swimming all around me.
But two minutes later, it was over. We found ourselves shipwrecked, sitting in a small fibreglass lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Me, mum, dad, my two brothers and deck hand Robin (Anne had left the trip in the Bahamas) watched the remains of our yacht sink into the sea.
For two days we sat in shock, just imagining how we would die: starvation or drowning. We only had enough water for 10 days, plus some food and sweets. Someone had grabbed a bag of onions.
Dad said, ‘We’re 200 miles west of Cape Espinoza, we’ve got 2,700 miles ahead of us to the Maldives. We’re never going to make it.’ But I had an idea – if we sailed to the middle of the Pacific where there was regular rain and more chance of rescue, we could collect rainwater and at least stay alive.