Sea lures octogenarian adventurer

SIX weeks ago, on January 16., an 84-year-old Englishman set out on a raft, built here in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, to drift 2,800 miles across the Atlantic to Eleuthera Island in Bahamas, tracing the route upon which a ship’s 18-foot long jolly boat carried the survivors of the 41 crew of an English cargo vessel sunk by a German ship disguised as a merchantman (but then drawing back the deck-cowlings to reveal cannons and machine guns) during World War 11.

Seven men scrambled aboard the boat. Seventy days later, it washed ashore in the Bahamas with two men still alive.

When Anthony Smith, an Englishman born in 1926, and now walking on crutches, announced his intentions to build the raft at the small port in Valle Gran Rey (the valley which has been a second home to our family since 1981) the harbourmaster said he would allow no such cockamamie, DIY craft to leave his harbour. Understandably, he visualised time and money wasted in rescuing the irresponsible old duffer and his misguided crew. However, when he saw the professionalism of the finished craft, he relented.

Two years before, Smith, after a serious accident, decided to turn what could have ended a career of travel and adventure into a life-asserting mission. “I had some luck — I was run over,” he said in a newspaper interview, “That’s what inspired the whole thing and provided the basis for the money. The whole point is to prove that elderly people can do something interesting. Well, I am 84 and disabled, so I’m well qualified on that score.”

A former science correspondent on The Daily Telegraph, he has written 30 books, worked on many films and documentaries and was a presenter of BBC television’s Tomorrow’s World. He hopes to demonstrate that rafts are as safe as hulled craft. He and his crew, some of them scientists — six men and six women, including himself — intend to study plankton drifts in the ocean and to raise funds for WaterAid, a charity providing clean drinking water in the Third World. The raft’s present position in mid-Atlantic (and an excellent Google map of La Gomera) can be seen at http://blog.mailasail.com/antikiraft. Daily progress can be followed on blogs at http://live.adventuretracking.com/antikiraft.

Floating on four 28 inch diameter water supply pipes, each approximately 39 feet long, and fourteen slimmer cross pipes, is 20 feet wide, has a sail of about 37 square feet, and two rudimentary rudders. Wooden planks form a deck supporting a modified animal shelter of wood and corrugated steel housing cooking, communication and navigation equipment, plus living and sleeping accommodation for four.

It was coincidental that last week, just after I’d sent off my column about the Gomero fishermen who venture alone far out to sea, that I was told the helicopter we’d seen sweeping its light back and forth over the ocean the night before and quartering it again in the morning had been searching for a local 84-year-old also on the ocean wave, and also possibly — but quite inadvertently — adrift towards the Bahamas.

The day before, Jose Manuel, widely respected as one of the best fishermen on the island, had set out (alone) for the northern coast, the best fishing grounds, but hadn’t returned that evening. Unfortunately, he’d left his mobile phone at home.

The sea was rough with big swells on the northern coast.

Also, Jose Manuel didn’t need to be there; he owned apartments, and was well-off. In fact, the Social Security had regularly ordered him to stop fishing; he was officially retired, in receipt of a pension and not supposed to work. He said he only fished for the sport, but everybody knew he landed commercial hauls of fish.

When he didn’t return by nightfall, the coastguard was alerted. It was late in the afternoon that they found him, 17 miles southwest, hale and hearty after his night in the open boat. His engine had broken down, and the current had carried him. There was no cause for panic, he said — but I imagine the emergency services, and the Social Security, will be having a word.