Phuket-based yachtswoman survives five days adrift in a dinghy

Created by doina. Last modified on 2006-03-08 23:02:36
Countries: Thailand

“I never lost faith,” Australian Dominque Courteille, 57, told Phuket Post from her hospital bed as she described her five-day ordeal at sea in a dinghy with no fresh water or food. Ms Courteille, her face scarred by almost a week beneath the fierce Andaman sun, arrived back on Phuket on Tuesday morning (07/02/06) with the captain of the fishing boat that had found her adrift off the islands just south of Langkawi. She was admitted to Bangkok Hospital Phuket for tests and to recover.

Her epic struggle against the elements began on the night of Thursday 2 March, when she attempted to return to her 11-metre yacht, Sonnet, after enjoying an evening with her crew on southern Thailand’s Koh Lipe, in the Butang islands just north of Langkawi. But wind and a king tide defeated the motor of her small dinghy and Ms Courteille soon found herself drifting away from the islands.

“She just disappeared into the night,” Ritchie Neustifter, 24, told the Post. “We thought she’d gone back to the boat and the dinghy had drifted away, but when we got out to it, we could tell she hadn’t slept on board.”

Mr Neustifter had joined the yacht in Langkawi to help sail it back to Phuket, where it is based at the Yacht Haven Marina. On discovering his skipper was missing, he and fellow crewmate, Conrad Ohlier, 43, set out to search the beaches of Koh Lipe and the surrounding islands, believing that Ms Courteille had returned to shore to wait out the heavy current. “We were searching for any sign of her – even just an oar – but there was nothing.”

The crew then sent out calls on channel 16, the emergency channel, and set about a search of the cone of possible drift, guessing that the king tide – the biggest of the year, Mr Neustifter said – had dragged the small dinghy back towards Malaysian waters. “We didn’t realise there were any officials on Koh Lipe. We thought it was just a few beach restaurants and bars. Then we saw these two people walking along the beach. They weren’t in uniform, but I guessed they were marine officials or something,” Mr Neustifter said.

Twelve hours after the discovery that Ms Courteille was missing, two Thai naval vessels and a helicopter began a widespread search of the area, by this point, however, the dinghy had likely already drifted into Malaysian waters.

Her engine dead and only her oars and failing strength to keep her going, Ms Courteille, continued her fight against the unrelenting current. “I could see islands in the distance and just kept rowing towards them. But the current was too strong,” she told the Post. Just out of the trade and fishing lanes, her cries of help to the several boats she saw in the distance could not be heard.

As the days passed and her situation seemed all the more hopeless, Ms Courteille, who is originally from Belgium, refused to give in to the hand that fate had dealt her. As the heat and sun began to bear down on her each day, she climbed out of the dinghy and swam in its shadow. Each evening, in the dying light she would inscribe her thoughts onto the Hyperlon skin of her inflatable dinghy with a ballpoint pen, take aim at the fast disappearing island’s on the horizon and begin to row. “I know it sounds weird, but I survived by drinking my own urine,” she said.

But, on Sunday, the Thai navy gave up the search. The crew of Sonnet, convinced now that they would never see their skipper again alive, made sail for the port at Satun. “We thought she was gone. On the way to Satun we dropped flowers over the back of the yacht in memory of her,” Mr Neustifter told the Post. In Satun, an Australian embassy official took possession of Ms Courteille’s personal effects and the crew returned, distraught, to Phuket.

But just one day later, a fishing boat from the Yee Long Trading company, found the exhausted Ms Courteille clinging to her oars. Two Thai crew on board helped the Taiwanese captain haul her virtually lifeless body and her dinghy aboard, and helped to revive her. When she was eventually able to speak again, the first thing she asked for was a mobile phone to call her close friend at Phuket’s Yacht Haven Marina. “She could hardly speak. She sounded exhausted, disorientated,” the marina employee told the Post. “She thought it was 10am, but it was after 4pm.”

Ms Courteille arrived back in at Deelok fishing port in Phuket on Tuesday morning with her saviours and was immediately taken to hospital by the tourist police for a check up and well-earned rest. But from her hospital bed, later that morning, she told the Post that she felt fit and in good spirits. “I’m in a hurry to see my friends at the Yacht Haven,” she said with a defiant smile.