June 19, 2019
Russians came to the rescue
Seventy-five-year-old adventurer from the German Lübeck Burghard Piske flipped over in the western Pacific Ocean in his self-made Polynesian pro Ana-Varu – it was too late to poison the sheet.
© Pieske
Piske went from Guam to the atoll of Lamotrek with two local residents who followed the path of traditional migration of Polynesians as part of their Rapa Nui event. Under the conditions of an extremely strong storm, he spent many hours at night at the helm. In the morning he handed the wheel to his comrades and went to sleep under the deck. But his colleagues are also tired and tired of the hard night. When a strong gust of wind came, they did not manage to shed the sheets in time. Proa turned upside down.
After Piske recovered from the shock, he grabbed an EPIRB emergency buoy and asked for a rescue by pressing a button. Then three sailors waited a good 12 hours. Despite the relatively warm water, yachtsmen soon became very cold.
But help was already close. First, the bags of water and warm clothes were dropped from the aircraft, and then at 8:00 pm a Russian container ship arrived at the scene of the accident and picked up a crew, which he handed over to the Coast Guard about 200 nautical miles from Guam. Shortly thereafter, Piske flew back to Germany. Proa Ana-Varu is still drifting, and it is unlikely to be rescued.
Burghard Piske enthusiastically reacted to the hospitality of the Russians and the Guamian rescuers, but he put it very peculiarly about the incident: “Sometimes it seems to me that such a catastrophe is necessary in order to understand what people are capable of.”
512 June 19, 2019 # 9150
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