Five days at sea with nothing but faith

Dominque Courteille

PHUKET - "I never lost faith," Australian Dominque Courteille said of her five-day ordeal at sea in a dinghy without fresh water or food.

"I prayed to my god. I knew I would survive, I knew I would be found," the 57-year-old mother of four told the Phuket Post. Ms Courteille, her face scarred by almost a week beneath the fierce Andaman Sea sun, returned to land yesterday with the captain of the fishing boat that had found her adrift south of Langkawi.

Her epic struggle against the elements began on Thursday when she attempted to return to her 11-metre yacht, Sonnet, after enjoying an evening with her crew in the Butang islands just north of Langkawi.

But wind and a king tide defeated the motor of her dinghy and she drifted away from the islands. "She just disappeared into the night," said crew member Ritchie Neustifter.

On discovering his skipper was missing, he and crewman Conrad Ohlier set out to search the beaches of the surrounding islands.

"We were searching for any sign ... but there was nothing," Mr Neustifter said.

Her engine dead and only her oars and failing strength to keep her going, Ms Courteille continued her fight against the unrelenting current.

"I could see islands in the distance and just kept rowing towards them. But the current was too strong."

As the heat and sun began to bear down on her each day, she climbed out of the dinghy and swam in its shadow. Each evening she would inscribe her thoughts onto the skin of her inflatable dinghy with a ballpoint pen, take aim at the fast disappearing islands on the horizon and begin to row.

"I survived by drinking my own urine," she said. The Sonnet's crew, convinced they would never see their skipper again alive, made for the port at Satun. "On the way to Satun we dropped flowers over the back of the yacht," Mr Neustifter said.

But just one day later, a fishing boat from the Yee Long Trading company, found the exhausted Ms Courteille clinging to her oars.

- AGENCIES