Sailing coincidence

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

In December 2006 I was south west of Australia on a singlehanded, non-stop circumnavigation in my yacht Elsi Arrub. My appendix had burst. I was taken off and my yacht had to be abandoned at sea approx. 300 nautical miles from the southwest tip of Australia. I was transferred to a hospital in Albany, southwest Australia. We hired a plane twice to try and find her but had no luck. In mid February we got a call from the coastguard to say Elsi Arrub had been found, 54 days after I had left her. It turned out an American singlehanded yachtsman, James Burwick, who was sailing from Cape Town to Auckland, had got into trouble in roughly the same area. On the way out to assist him the coastguard plane had flown over what looked like an abandoned yacht. They knew my story and this turned out to be my yacht. She was rescued and taken back to my home in Shetland. In March 2014 I was on another singlehanded, non-stop circumnavigation in the same yacht, Elsi Arrub. This time I was dismasted in a storm near Cape Horn. The same storm dismasted another yacht 100 miles away. It was James Burwick again. We met onshore and both of us couldn’t believe the coincidence. There are 1,000’s of yachtsmen and women sailing all over the world at any one time so it was a bit bizarre. For a more detailed account see www.elsiarrub.co.uk Andrew Halcrow
Total votes: 224
Date submitted:Fri, 23 Jul 2021 15:10:49 +0000Coincidence ID:11452