‘A new lease on life’: Calgary sailor rescued by Russian and Ukrainian oil workers off African coast

A Calgary sailor was rescued by a team of Russian and Ukrainian oil workers after his boat capsized and he spent 14 hours waiting to be saved.

A Calgary man is grateful to be back home after a harrowing ordeal off the coast of Africa.

Casper Venter’s sailboat sank near Madagascar, and it was a crew made up of Russian and Ukrainian sailors that rescued him.

Venter was transporting a sailboat from Malayasia to the Caribbean with two other men when the boat started to leak on March 19. Soon water was coming in faster than they could pump it out.

“At first we turned the boat around and we tried to sail back to Madagascar to see if we could keep it afloat long enough that we might make it to land,” Venter recalls.

“But at about 9 o’clock we realized that the ocean was the same level of the deck and we stepped into the life raft. Shortly after, we saw the mast go behind the waves and it was gone. We couldn’t see it anymore, it just went down.”

With the sailboat now completely under, Venter and his two crewmates were stuck on a life raft less than two metres long.

Venter said the men spent a wet and miserable 14 hours bobbing in the giant waves.

“We got a lot of water in the life raft.  Waves were banging on us through the night so it was definitely hair raising. The life raft is designed for it so from that point of view it was OK. We were all quite seasick,” Venter said.