Two people have been rescued from a yacht after they were stranded overnight in extreme weather conditions off the New South Wales south coast.
A distress beacon was activated onboard the 19-metre vessel at about 1pm on Monday. It was about 180km east of Nowra.
NSW police marine command and Australian defence force personnel were notified by the joint rescue coordination centre.
“The hairs on the back of our neck started standing up,” Ch Insp Anthony Brazzill said on Tuesday about seeing multiple beacon alerts come through.
The Spirit of Mateship yacht had sustained a mechanical failure, lost its rudder and was taking on water – all in “terrible conditions”, Brazzill said.
A rescue operation was launched, involving the NSW police vessel Nemesis and the navy’s HMAS Canberra.
Winds of between 50 and 70km/h along with seas of up to six metres made the rescue effort challenging for crews. HMAS Canberra’s captain Brendan O’Hara labelled the conditions “quite extreme”.
The police vessel launched a smaller sea boat to recover the two people while HMAS Canberra provided a shielding presence from the wind and the sea to “calm the malevolent environment down”, Benjamin Flight from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority told the ABC.
“The yacht was running away from us as we were chasing it down the coast, which obviously made it a challenge,” Brazzill said, noting the yacht’s crew had difficulty bringing the sail down.
“Tying to come alongside that without a rudder, sail up, becomes extremely challenging.”
The stranded pair – a 60-year-old man and 48-year-old woman – had to jump off the yacht one at a time. They were brought onboard the Nemesis and were expected to arrive at marine area command later on Tuesday.
“They are fatigued. They are uninjured,” Brazzill said.
The yacht, however, was left at sea.
“Our priority is to rescue people, save lives, not save boats,” Brazzill said. “Depending on conditions it may come in on the coast further down, it may go to New Zealand. These things happen.”
An additional navy ship and a RAAF C-130J Hercules aircraft were also involved in the rescue effort.
Officers made contact with the pair onboard the yacht on Monday. At about 1am on Tuesday, they were approximately 170 nautical miles south-east of Sydney Heads.
The rescue operation was suspended overnight due to extreme weather conditions and resumed at first light Tuesday.
At about 7.25am the man and woman were safely rescued from the vessel uninjured, NSW police said.
O’Hara said the pair’s almost 24-hour ordeal would have been tough, given his far-more-sizeable ship had also battled the powerful swells.
“[The pair] were just holding on as best they could,” he told Seven’s Sunrise program.
“I hate to think what it was like for them because even onboard Canberra, which is quite a large ship, we were rocking and rolling a fair bit.
“Not much of the crew here have had much sleep, so the two personnel in Spirit of Mateship definitely had no sleep at all. I dread to think about the conditions in there.”
The 60-year-old man brought the ship from the Gold Coast on New Year’s Eve last year. He had been living onboard travelling around the coast, Brazzill said.
– Additional reporting Australian Associated Press
