Review: Vivien Horler
The Life and Death of a Rock ’n Roll Sailor – A true story, by Diane Coetzer (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
Yachtsman Anthony Murray and his sister-in-law Diane Coetzer planned to write a book together about his ocean voyages. But not this one.
Anthony was an experienced sailor who delivered yachts all around the of world. Diane is a freelance journalist, and the daughter of the late lamented writer Owen Coetzer, with whom I worked on the Cape Argus and Weekend Argus for years.
Diane is also the partner of Jeremy, Anthony’s younger brother, who worked in the music production business.
On February 18, 2015, during a voyage delivering a Cape Town-built Leopard 44 class catamaran to Phuket in Thailand across the Indian Ocean in cyclone season, the catamaran and its crew of three lost all contact with the world. It had been expected in Thailand later in February.
The crew, which included a 20-year-old yachtie on his first major voyage, has never been heard of again, although the hull of the boat was spotted south-east of Mauritius in May 2015. It was again sighted off Cape Agulhas in late January 2016, taken in tow two days later and then, when the tow was lost, not seen again.
This book is the story of the families and their growing concerns about the lengthening silence from the catamaran, their desperate attempts to find out from the international leisure company that owned the boat and was having it delivered to Phuket what was happening, their disillusionment with that company, and the growing conviction that Anthony, 58, his first mate Reg Robertson, 60, and Jaryd Payne, 20, were never coming home.
The narrative is supplemented by pieces written and recordings made by Anthony which were intended for use in his book with Coetzer, describing his voyages and his infatuation with the sea.
By all accounts Anthony was a maverick who didn’t fit in with conventional life. He grew up in Cowies Hill in KZN and, despite undiagnosed dyslexia, achieved an honours degree in personnel management from Wits Business School.
His first job was as a human resources and training manager for a retail company. But his love of the sea led him to give up on personnel and take a yacht-hand course which preceded his first sailing voyage, a 14-day trip from Durban to Knysna. His next voyage was as crew on a catamaran sailing from Cape Town to an island off the Brazilian coast. Anthony was on his way.
But he was no saint. While at sea he was a strict disciplinarian, with no alcohol allowed on board; at home he was a cheerful carouser and womaniser, regularly getting into scrapes. And he was anxious that in chronicling his life, Coetzer should give a fair representation of what he was really like.
Anthony, Reg and Jaryd set off from Table Bay on December 14, 2014. About seven weeks later, Diane and Jeremy realise they haven’t heard from Anthony for a few weeks.
Usually he is good about checking in fortnightly via his satellite phone. They phone Jeremy’s sister in Durban – she hasn’t heard for a while either.
They ring repeatedly, but there is no answer.
Dread begins to mount. They contact TUI Marine in Cape Town, the owner of the catamaran and reportedly the biggest leisure, travel tourism company in the world.
Not to worry, they’re told. The crew have enough supplies for 65 days, and besides if anything has gone wrong, the EPIRB will have raised the alarm.
Coetzer explains: “When deployed, the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon immediately sends a signal to an international satellite system that alerts authorities there is a distress situation.”
The woman from TUI Marine adds: “Anthony is an experienced skipper and would have deployed the EPIRB if he thought they needed help.”
And the thing about EPIRBs is that they immediately start broadcasting once they hit the water. Assuming they have been properly programmed, that is.
In a poignant paragraph, Coetzer writes: “I wish I could say this is a story about people behaving decently in a time of crisis, and that our first encounter with the company Anthony was sailing for was the start of a collective effort to establish why contact with him had been lost and make every effort to re-establish it.”
But it was not.
In desperation, the families seek and find an expert, a man named John Titterton, a former TUI Marine delivery skipper. He tells them that previously there was no way any delivery skippers would be in the Southern Indian Ocean in cyclone season, which runs from mid-November to the end of April.
Titterton knows what he is talking about. Originally, he told the families, when it was cyclone season yachts were delivered by the much longer yet safer route via the Panama Canal.
But then the local company was bought out and changes were introduced. In an article Titterton wrote: “But routes were changed – suddenly skippers were told they could no longer could take the long and safe route to Australia but needed to take the more dangerous route via the Southern [Indian] Ocean.”
He added: “…[I] must stress that in the Caribbean a skipper has hundreds of safe ports and ‘hurricane holes’ to hide in, in the event of an approaching hurricane, but in the Southern Indian Ocean there is no place to hide out from a cyclone or storm”.
At their meeting at Titterton’s home in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, he tells the families “something that pierced our collective hearts like an arrow. Sooner or later, he had told the company, they would be responsible for the death of crew. Sooner or later, someone would die.”
If you are remotely gripped by sailing or the oceans, this book will grab you. It is an immensely human and personal account, and Anthony’s voice, beyond his watery grave, adds a poignant note. I highly recommend it.