I've been listening to the USCG searching for these guys for 11 days. They could have picked a better time of year to go offshore in a 30' boat in the N. Atlantic...but thank god all are safe. No EPIRB...Here's the story:
LONDON, Ont. -- Two Londoners missing at sea for 11 days and feared dead after a failed Coast Guard search have been found alive off the coast of South Carolina.
Paul Shore and Brock Argyle, both in their 50s, managed to hail a fisherman and get their badly damaged, nine-metre sailboat towed to Georgetown, S.C.
"I feel much better today. I was able to touch ground, real ground," Shore said by phone.
The men arrived Thursday but only made contact with family and friends yesterday.
"Oh my God. They were found," one close friend said. "I just bawled my eyes out."
The two men survived a three-day storm that smashed 11-metre-high waves and 110-km/h winds into their sailboat, Pride.
They spent the next eight days inching the damaged boat to shore, watching one potential rescuer pass by, wondering if anyone would find them in the Atlantic.
"We were just a little speck of salt in the ocean," Shore said.
Their food ran out just before they hailed a man, their "new best friend," fishing off the S.C. coast, Shore said.
Shore and Brock have sailed out of Port Stanley for years.
"My dream was always to sail down the east coast," said Shore, a hotel and restaurant manager. "We had been planning this for a long time."
The two sailors left Lewes, Del., for Panama on Nov. 30.
They were supposed to check in with family and friends on Dec. 2. By Dec. 9, with no word, a friend contacted the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard scoured the ocean from Delaware to Florida, then called off the search Dec. 12.
Just after noon Dec. 13, their eyes fell, with great relief, on a distant smokestack and to the north, some houses and then the fisherman.
By 9:30 p.m. they had been towed.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Canad...26036-sun.html
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