Two young britons, James Adair and Ben Stenning have narrowly escaped death after rowing 3,200 nautical miles from Australia to Mauritius unsupported.
On Sunday, the final day of the gruesome 116 day voyage, in failing light and in sight of shore, their 23-foot rowing boat capsized after a massive waved hit their boat.
They were thrown into sea - at the mercy of towering breakers that threatened to smash them into the rocks that laid along the sea shore.
James Adair let out a short statement, and one of the sentences he said and I quote was,"It was like a wall made of water" and again another statement released by him was: "It just seemed to black out the whole sky, we just knew that we were going to get rolled. The oars had disappeared and the boat was full of white water, everything was ripped apart. We thought that we were going to die.."
Scrambling to salvage what they could, they found some parachute flares which they were going to celebrate with, they tried to set them off but their fingers were numb from rowing such a long distance. Both ended up cutting themselves as they fired the flares into the air.
"I was bleeding from all the cuts on my leg, so Ben kept looking under water to see if there was any sharks in sight.' said Mr. Adair. 'Every time a wave would hit us, we would go under water and cling on to each other."
"We knew we had to get out of there,'' said Kenyan-born Ben Stenning, 31. ''We had to get out from the rocks or we knew it would be game over.."
As the night fell, and the moon rose a rescue helicopter scoured the sea, failing to spot them frantically waving their arms.
With their boat capsized, their equipment was smashed or washed overboard, their antenna broken, they had to make a life or death decision; to abandon the crippled boat or to stay with it in the hope of rescue.
They chose to swim for it, but strong currents forced them back and made it impossible for them to be able to swim to the shoreline. Instead of that, they were washed into a coral reef which they crawled across to escape the breakers, dressed only in ripped bicycle shorts. The lacerated torso bears the scars.
By chance, a Mauritian life boat searching for the pair seen one of the oars from the boat. The pair where still far from shore and were dehydrated. The Mauritian life boat was in-sight of them and picked them up and took them to she shoreline.
Here is a picture of the pair after the great ordeal, that nearly cost them their life:
and again, here is a picture of their lacerated torsos which is covered in scars:
They came ashore to find out that they were the third ever pair to cross the Indian Ocean. So at least at the end of it, they could go home with an achievement that would make them famous. As if the big ordeal wasn't big enough.
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Originally Posted by Tyler
