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Brother cuts sailor's body adrift
LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA -- The body of a dead British sailor was adrift in a liferaft in the mid-Atlantic after his brother decided to cut him loose from his yacht. David Hitchcock tried to save his brother Phillip when he fell overboard on Saturday as they sailed in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers. Both brothers were on deck at the time of the accident, wearing safety harnesses clipped onto the boat. David was working on the foredeck when he realised Phillip was no longer on deck. It is believed that he discovered his brother, still conscious, being dragged alongside the boat and that the two brothers talked about what to do. A man overboard recovery beacon was deployed, but David was unable to lift his 16-stone brother back onboard with the boat still sailing downwind in rough seas. "We believe that as part of a rescue attempt, he tried to use a sling recovery system, but we believe it broke or the attempt at recovery failed," said Jeremy Wyatt of rally organisers World Cruising Club. It was decided to pay Phillip out on a longer line to prevent him bashing into the side while David stopped the boat. "David hove to and got the sails down. When the boat was under control and he got him alongside he found that his brother was dead. We do not know the cause of death," Wyatt said. David alerted the marine radio control centre at Falmouth, U.K. by satellite phone. The control centre advised David to consider his own safety and, after a family phone conference, he decided to cut the line attaching his brother's body to the boat. David tied his brother's body to a liferaft, in which he had placed an emergency locator beacon, and set it adrift. The liferaft was being tracked by centre. Their father, Eric, said it was a "dreadful" choice for David. "David said his brother was lifeless with blue lips when he got to him. He thought he had a heart attack with the shock of going overboard," Eric told The Times of London. Two other ARC yachts were diverted to go to the rescue of Hitchcock's yacht Toutazimut, arriving about 20 hours after the accident. The yachts have been standing by, but the rough seas have prevented crew transferring to the Toutazimut. This is the first fatality in 17 years of the ARC, which annually sees more than 200 yachts make the 2,700 mile crossing from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to the Caribbean island of St Lucia. Two other boats have reported trouble in the rally. F2, sailed by Britons Peter and Zara Davis reported losing their rudder, while Sualiga, sailed by French skipper Pierre Samper and his family, was diverting to the Cape Verde islands with leaking diesel tanks.
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