Blake spirit beats killer wave

25-year-old Philip Blake (left) at first thought the tsunami was the wake of a huge ship.

A remarkable display of seamanship saved a young kinsman of Sir Peter Blake in the Asian tsunami.

Philip Blake, who is the son of Sir Peter's first cousin Warren Blake, survived by driving his 36ft (11m) motor yacht Lady Olivia directly into the wave's path.

The 25-year-old, who learned to sail with his father, Sir Peter and other family members, told the Weekend Herald of his encounter with a 1km wall of water 6m high.

As manager and chief sailing instructor at Raffles Marina in Singapore, he was leading a convoy of six motor yachts up Malaysia's west coast to the Thai island of Phuket.

Five of the boats had moored at Chalong Bay in southern Phuket on Boxing Day morning, after a Christmas Day spent diving at the picturesque Phi Phi islands, made famous by the film The Beach and now devastated.

Mr Blake is thankful he was on a boat when the tsunami hit.

"People on the beach just got ripped apart from each other."

He got his first glimpse of the tsunami soon after casting off to collect a passenger at Chalong Bay's 400m concrete jetty.

The wave spanned the 1km width of the bay's southwest entrance.

For a second, he thought it was wake from a huge ship. Then he looked at the calm sea and clear sky.

"It was just flat water all the way out to this thing."

He realised then that it was a tsunami.

He got on the radio frantically trying to alert other yachts in the convoy. His calls went unanswered.

Mr Blake knew his only option was to try to power over the looming wave.

Keeping the bow to the tsunami was imperative. If the Lady Olivia went sideways into it, it would capsize; if it ended up stern to the wave, the water could surge through the cabin and sink the boat in seconds.

Mr Blake believes it took about four minutes for the tsunami to reach land after he first saw it. (Tsunamis slow in shallow water but the waves get higher.)

When the tsunami was about 100m away, he saw the sea around the boat being sucked out.

He put the engine into reverse to keep the Lady Olivia from being pulled out too. When the wave was just 20m away, he slammed the engine into forward, powering the yacht up and over it.

"The adrenaline's surging. I'm whooping like a cowboy," he recalled.

The elation turned to dismay when he saw two more giant waves on the other side.

"That's when I went, uh-oh, this is going to hurt."

He was concerned that the boat would smash on to the floor of the shallow 3m bay.

But it miraculously survived unscathed, as did the other boats in the convoy. Mr Blake said the concrete jetty helped to protect three of them. Nor was anyone in his group injured - "We were so fortunate."

Mr Blake treasures memories of a month sailing with Sir Peter from England to Italy in 1997.

Asked how the great sailor would have approached the tsunami, he said, "He would've gone out and met it in true Sir Peter fashion."