Joyriding the waves - two rescued after taking a yacht
Published: September 20, 2004
Two men with outsize hangovers are being questioned by police on suspicion of launching joyriding into the new field of ocean-going yachts.
Police who usually associate the crime of “twocing” - taking without owner’s consent - with anti-social teenagers and fast cars needed help from the coastguards of three countries before arrests were made.
The drama began on Saturday evening when police in Whitstable, Kent, took a call from a local woman whose boyfriend had just rung her on his mobile phone.
A spokesman for Kent police said: “She informed us that her boyfriend and a friend of his had called her to say that they were adrift in a boat somewhere off the north Kent coast.”
The woman was surprised because the men, aged 29 and 24 and both from Whitstable, had gone out the previous evening for a few drinks in the town.
The police said: “They claimed to have been out drinking on Friday night when they ‘took’ a boat either from Whitstable or Herne Bay in order to cross to the Isle of Sheppey. On their return they ran out of fuel and therefore made the call to her. It then seems that contact was lost when the batteries on their mobile phones ran out.”
The woman’s alarm call triggered a search of 3,625 sq km (1,400 sq miles) of the outer Thames estuary, North Sea and Channel, with French and Belgian coastguards joining their British counterparts to try to trace the hapless pair. Hundreds of vessels using the busy shipping lanes, where a drifting yacht is as vulnerable to big ships as a jaywalker on a motorway, were warned to maintain an extra watch.
A yacht yawing helplessly and without power was finally located at 9am yesterday, 24 miles east of Ramsgate in French waters and a long way from the Isle of Sheppey.
The two missing Whitstable men were found on board safe but confused about their whereabouts and were taken by helicopter to Dover where they were formally arrested. The watch manager of Thames coastguard, Anthony Mayhew, said last night: “These gentlemen were extremely lucky to be picked up safe and well. They had favourable weather conditions overnight and were fortunate to be spotted by a passing merchant ship after drifting for some 40 miles.”
The yacht was largely undamaged and will be returned to moorings in Kent.
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