It was just after 0500 when 33-year-old Shetlander Sam Young, a crewman aboard 27m fishing trawler Opportune sent out an emergency MAYDAY.
Being on watch duty more than 35 nautical miles off the Scottish coast, Sam first sensed danger when alarms began to sound in the vessel’s wheelhouse amid rough seas and seven metre waves. He'd gone to check the vessel’s engine room, only to find the whole area rapidly flooding with sea water. Without a moment’s notice, he raced back to wake the seven fellow crew members sleeping below deck.
“I was just stood on watch while the boys slept downstairs in their beds when alarms started going off on deck. I went to have a look in the Engine Room and water was covering the gearbox with spray firing up towards the roof. I knew right away that it was too much to handle and I called the coastguard,” Sam said.
“In the last ten years in Shetland, one boat left the call for help too long and nearly lost their lives, and another had been a bit quicker, but the vessel was still lost.”
RNLI Sumburgh lifeboat and an HM Coastguard Rescue Helicopter were rapidly dispatched, alongside a nearby Norwegian Coast Guard helicopter. Sam describes the chaos as he woke the crew and got them into life jackets and a life raft, as there were no other nearby vessels to call upon for help.
“The boat was going up and down and the life raft’s tethering rope was running through my hands. One of the crew was worried about some of his belongings on board, but I told him to get straight into the life raft with the five others.
“My blood must’ve been fast running back to my heart because I couldn’t feel my hands. The first life raft broke away, and it was just me and the skipper running on borrowed time on deck.
“We put out another MAYDAY and then got into our second life raft. In less than two and a half minutes, she was gone. It happened so fast.”
Bobbing around in the North Sea, Sam and his crew felt like hours had passed until rescuers arrived on scene. But in 20 minutes, both helicopters had reached the scene and plucked the crew to safety.
“When I was pulled up on a winch wire by the helicopter and dangling over the side, I was like, 'Get me inside!' We got dropped at Sumburgh and I got back to my car in wet clothes, filled up with petrol and drove home. It was a shaky drive, but the only thing I cared about at that time was that everyone had got home safe.”
Sam’s advice to fellow fishermen is that timing is everything. “Never leave it too late to make that decision,” he warns. “Don’t worry about the boat, worry about yourselves first. Someone did ask me whether I’d go to sea the next day, but if you knew what was round the corner, you wouldn’t go anywhere, would you?”
