Five rescued after week adrift off Cornwall

Five people were rescued off the Cornish coast yesterday after drifting for seven days in a life-raft amid storms and 30ft waves after their boat sank near the Isles of Scilly.

The crew, who had been sailing from Ireland to France, were rescued after they dialled 999 when the raft drifted close enough to shore for a mobile phone signal to be picked up just after 9am yesterday.

"I was really, really scared they [rescue authorities] would think it was a joke," Ian Faulkner, 27, who made the call, said at a press conference at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, where the group were admitted for treatment for hypothermia.

Rescue organisations were astonished at the incident, which they said was extremely rare in the days of emergency beacons and satellite phones. The group on board had tinned and dried food on their raft but had run out of water on Tuesday. They revealed that they had kept two bottles of urine, just in case their situation became so desperate they had to drink it.

The owner of the 60ft ketch which sank, the Inis Mil, was Stephanie Preux, 25, a French air traffic controller. Ian's father, David Faulkner 56, of Surbiton, Surrey, was the skipper. The other passengers were a German, Jurgen Hensel, 44, who had previously owned the boat, and an Australian, Bjorn Bjorseth, 19.

The crew had set off last Monday from Kenmare Bay, Co Kerry, Ireland, for Cherbourg in France but got into trouble in the early hours of last Tuesday when a bilge pump on the 56-year-old vessel was found to be broken. The boat rapidly took on water and hand pumps failed to work. After making unsuccessful "Pan Pan" (the level below Mayday) and finally Mayday calls, they decided to abandon the boat for the enclosed raft at 5pm last Wednesday. They estimate they were about two-thirds of the way to the Isles of Scilly when the boat sank.

The distress calls were not heard, according to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, but when the crew failed to arrive in France, coastguard agencies were put on alert that the ship might be missing and to keep a lookout for it.

David Faulkner claimed yesterday that one fishing boat, which had sailed to a distance of 400 metres from their life-raft, had ignored their pleas for help. "I really hope one day I'll meet the man," he said.

Before they left the boat, the crew had been sending up flares and setting fire to tyres on the boat's deck, in an attempt to attract the attention of any passing ship. As they left the boat, David Faulkner poured petrol on it and set it alight in a final attempt to attract help.

"A force eight was running, seas were mountainous, but we got into dry clothes, took food on board and went," David said. "Everybody got off and I went back into the wheelhouse with petrol and I will never do that again. I lost some of my eyebrow. We got off and we paddled away from the burning wreck but it followed us - the masts are tall so you can imagine what would happen if it fell it on you."

Ian said: "It was very emotional, there was no going back. Trying to get my dad back into the [life-raft] while the boat was on fire was terrifying - not knowing how the life raft was going to operate."

David said the "team" had kept each other going in the raft. There was never a time when he considered that the group would not be found.

"You might as well just jump overboard if you're going to [think like] that," David said.

Mr Bjorseth said: "Whenever anyone said 'if' [we get rescued] we would say 'when'. We probably spoke for eight hours about what sort of food we'd have when we got picked up."

After drifting for seven days and with no supplies left, the crew were able to make the vital call from Mr Bjorseth's mobile phone. There was just one bar of battery left on that third and last phone of the group when that call was made.

During the week on the raft, the crew ran out of food, sharing just a Mars bar on the last day, and they found it almost impossible to sleep because it was so uncomfortable.

Davidjoked that people should get a raft double the size of the six-person one they were in if they had five people on board a vessel. He described the motion of it as "going up in an elevator on a yo-yo".

"Your head ends up in your stomach, and your stomach ends up in your head," he said.

The crew said they could not open the cover of the raft because of the large waves that were striking them.

When they finally saw shore yesterday morning after drifting for hundreds of miles they did not know where they were but thought they might be near Newquay.

"They reported they could see some windmills," a Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokeswoman said. The coastguard was able to work out that they were near wind farms at Trevose Head. A search and rescue helicopter from RNAS Culdrose located the crew four miles off the Cornish coast and winched them to safety.

Ms Preux broke down while trying to speak at the press conference and was comforted by Ian. "I'm just glad to be alive," she said.

Mr Bjorseth said it was his first trip to sea, adding: "It was my maiden voyage and it ended in a life-raft."

Four of the crew were discharged from hospital yesterday afternoon. David Faulkner was kept in hospital overnight.

Rick Raeburn, a Royal National Lifeboat Institution safety manager, said such incidents were very unusual because most people now carried an emergency beacon which identifies the position of a ship by satellite when it is activated.

Alan Tarby, coxswain of the Padstow lifeboat, which recovered the raft, said: "They are extremely lucky to have survived, considering the weather in the last week or so."