Fed: Survivors tell of two harrowing days at sea

AAP General News (Australia)
12-29-1998
Fed: Survivors tell of two harrowing days at sea

By Rod McGuirk

PAMBULA, NSW, Dec 29 AAP - Distraught survivors of the sunken Sydney-Hobart race yacht
Winston Churchill today told shipmates and rescuers of their harrowing time at sea and the
anguish of watching three friends swept to their deaths.

The bodies of Winston Churchill crewmen James Lawler and Michael Bannister were recovered
today before the search for missing shipmate John Dean was abandoned.

The three, all from Sydney, were washed out of a liferaft by giant waves which had earlier
overturned and sunk their yacht.

The two survivors, John "Steamer" Stanley and John Gibson, were rescued late last night by
emergency services from what was left of their liferaft.

Sea Hawk helicopter pilot Nic Trimmer, who rescued the survivors, revealed the anguish of
the men who had to leave their colleagues behind.

"One of the survivors, he was quite distraught, he informed us that ... somewhere in the
early hours of yesterday morning there were actually five people in the liferaft," Lieutenant
Trimmer told AAP.

"They got hit by numerous big waves, but one wave in particular threw three of them out and
they were unable to recover these three back into the liferaft."

Stanley and Gibson were recovering in hospital today after being plucked by helicopter from
their shredded liferaft late last night.

They told their skipper Richard Winning and shipmate Bruce Gould, who were among four
rescued from another liferaft hours earlier, that they had decided to slash the floor of their
upturned raft to breathe.

"When they turned upside down, they had to put a slit in the top (floor) to get some air
because they couldn't get it up again," Mr Gould told journalists after visiting Mr Stanley in
the Pambula District Hospital.

"Then they got turned turtle again. When they got inside the thing, the floor caved in."

Mr Winning said the liferaft, which is designed to be enclosed with a floor and canopy, was
reduced to a large life ring that slipped repeatedly in the mountainous seas.

"(It capsized) many times," he said. "You couldn't put a number on it."

"We copped it twice but they copped it a lot more than that. They had a liferaft that had
no bottom in it at all. So basically all they had in effect was a child's lifering that they
were clinging onto."

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KEYWORD: SYDHOB SECOND NIGHTLEAD

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