Sophie Elmhirst · 2024 · survival
Sophie Elmhirst's 2024 account of a true ordeal. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey gave up everything to sail from England to New Zealand, until a whale sank their yacht in the Pacific in 1973 and left them adrift in a tiny raft for 118 days. Part survival epic, part portrait of a marriage tested to its limit, it follows their voyage from Southampton through Panama to the empty ocean where they very nearly died, and somehow did not.
- 1Southampton
In June 1972 Maurice and Maralyn Bailey sell everything, leave Southampton in their small yacht Auralyn, and set sail for New Zealand and a life free of the land.
- 2Panama Canal
After months of cruising they pass through the Panama Canal into the Pacific, the vast ocean opening ahead of them.
- 3Sinking Point
Three hundred miles from the Galapagos a sperm whale stoves in the hull; Auralyn sinks, and the couple scramble into a rubber raft and dinghy with a few tins and no radio.
- 4Rescue
For 118 days they drift, living on turtles, birds and rainwater, watching seven ships pass, until at last a Korean fishing boat sees them and lifts them, barely alive, from the sea.