DAVID COOPER / TORONTO STAR
RESCUED: Jack Nye’s sloop once docked at Port Credit marina, is a goner. But he lived to tell the tale, thanks to a Swedish ship.
Sailor plucked from Atlantic
BY EMILY YEARWOOD
STAFF REPORTER / TORONTO STAR
A 76-year-old Mississauga man is
home and back to running his
business just a week after his boat
was swamped 980 kilometres off the
southwestern tip of England.
The president of Nye Manufacturing,
a Mississauga company, was sailing
his 10-metre sloop, the Panderama,
to England. It was to be the fourth
transatlantic trip for the former Royal
Navy man and “recreational sailor,”
but the first time he’d attempted it
alone.
Jack Nye fought continual storms
after sailing out of Halifax four weeks
ago, but the weather turned even
fouler last Thursday morning.
Nye’s boat was knocked down by 12-
metre waves twice but straightened
up. Then it rolled over.
The mast snapped and Nye was
trapped when the boom blocked the
cabin door. Nye used a pump to pry
the hatch open. “My main thought
was to get out of there, to survive.”
He activated an emergency beacon,
whose signal was picked up by British
officials.
They alerted the Canadian Coast
Guard in Halifax, who in turn called
Nye’s wife, Hilda, in Mississauga.
She and her three adult children
gathered at her home to wait for more
news, eventually making phone
contact with the pilot of a Royal Air
Force plane circling the boat.
The Atlantic Companion, a Swedish
container ship, also responded and
pulled alongside the Panderama. At
one point, Nye was afraid he had
been abandoned because high
waves had forced the Companion
away.
“He thought, ‘Oh, gosh, they forgot
about me,’ “ Hilda Nye said.
Finally, two sailors climbed down and
tossed lines to Nye, which he
fastened to a safety harness. When
waves lifted his boat, he jumped a
metre across to the Companion and
was pulled aboard.
“He was well enough to walk to the
sick bay. They gave him a bowl of
soup and then he slept for 22 hours,”
Hilda said, laughing. Nye marked his
76th birthday aboard the ship on
Sunday and flew home Tuesday right
after it docked in Halifax.
“Other than a sore neck and bruises,
he’s okay”, Hilda Nye said.
“He always says sailing is 90 percent
cent boredom and 10 per cent terror.
I guess he got his terror.“
With files from Canadian Press