NZer alive after 11-day ordeal at sea

Ferocious seas battered Mr Freeman.

HANOI - A New Zealander and an Australian survived 11 terrifying days in a storm-battered liferaft with no food or water after their yacht sank south of Hong Kong.

Steven Freeman of Nelson and Mark Smith of Hobart clung desperately to their liferaft as storms flipped it over and over for days on end.

They ate nothing for 11 days, licked rainwater off the raft and were forced to drink their own urine after a wave swept away their carefully prepared emergency supplies within minutes of their yacht sinking. They were finally rescued by Vietnamese fishermen.

"We were left with just a paddle and a sponge," said Mr Smith, 49. "We battled for our lives with almost nothing. It was just sheer willpower that kept us alive."

Mr Freeman, 30, said: "It's unreal. It's unbelievable.

"The Vietnamese have been so fantastic. They dragged us out of the water, and everyone has been unbelievably wonderful to us."

Both men's greatest fear, Mr Smith said, was that the other would be swept away, leaving one man alone to face the sea.

"It definitely helped to be with someone. We said if one of us went, that would be the worst thing."

Mr Smith, the skipper, and Mr Freeman, the first mate, set off from Hong Kong on December 5 to deliver a 20m motor yacht to Australia for its owner.

But within a day, one of the yacht's engines failed and the seas started to get rough.

Mr Smith said he turned the yacht around about 200km off Hong Kong to try to make it back to port.

But a "monster wave" crashed over the bow and bashed a hole in the hull.

"We sank in 60 seconds, and the very next wave flipped the liferaft just as we were zipping in," Mr Smith said.

"It was unbelievable bad luck. All our flares, radio, water and food - just gone."

The men licked rain off the sides of the raft because they had no container to catch it in.

After three days, the rains stopped, leaving only winds that Mr Smith said never dropped below 65km/h.

"Every day, the raft was flipped and flipped again," he said.

"We did all the horrible stuff like drink our own stuff."

Just before dawn on their 11th day at sea, the two saw the lights of Ly Son Island and tried to paddle towards it.

Vietnamese fishermen coming out to sea for the first day after a week of storms rescued them.

Mr Smith last night told the Herald from the small hospital on the island that Mr Freeman was well and resting.

"He's also looking forward to having his family confirm that he is alive."

He said the conditions were ferocious and reduced both men to emaciated stick figures.

"We're very very weak. We can hardly walk. We're slowly, slowly regaining strength. There's not much left of us. Now we're more concerned with the next stage, getting us home. [Steven would] love to come home for Christmas."

He said the taste of urine was "shocking" and the situation was so desperate that the men had talked about having to eat the remains of the first one to go.

The same late-season tropical storms that tormented the pair - and killed more than 40 people in floods in central Vietnam - have made it impossible so far to take the survivors to the mainland, according to Mai Huu Hao, deputy directory of the island's hospital.

Mr Freeman's sister Karen Scowen was overcome last night to hear what her brother had endured.

She said he had last been in touch at the end of November, to congratulate his mother the day after she remarried. He said he would be out of touch for a few weeks on the boat, so the family had had no reason to worry at not hearing from him.

"He would do anything to survive," Mrs Scowen said in tears. "He's the baby of our family and he's a headstrong fighter."

- NZPA, additional reporting by Elizabeth Binning and Derek Cheng