Six crew members, three men and three women, from South Carolina, escaped harm on Tuesday morning June 8 when the 46.3-foot yacht, CARO, on which they were travelling, struck 60 Yards Reef outside Island Harbour Bay at about 9.30.

David Webster’s fishing boat “Revenge” which rescued the yacht’s passengers and crew

The stricken yacht was being towed from the point of impact to the inshore waters but the effort had to be abandoned when it quickly filled up with water. The fishing boat, Revenge, with David Webster, his son Ross and Terrence Webster aboard, took the yacht’s crew to the pier leaving their belongings in the damaged and partly submerged vessel.

The survivors with Captain Huhms at extreme right

According to the captain, Michael Huhms, the force of the impact on the reef ripped out the yacht’s rudder. He and the others were on a ten-day sailing cruise, having rented the boat in French St. Martin. They spent two days at Road Bay, Anguilla, and were going to Gustavia in St. Barths by sailing around Island Harbour which the captain thought was the better route. “I wish I had gone the other way,” he said on reflection.

“We were sailing and struck a reef farther offshore and then a fishing vessel took us under tow to this point. The yacht took on too much water and they couldn’t tow us any farther,” Captain Huhms told an investigating Marine Branch Police Officer from the Sandy Ground outstation.

The boat is owned by Moorings, a company with links in Tortola and St. Martin. Todville Harrigan, a resident at Island Harbour and representative of the company, was looking into the incident._

The yacht was pulled off the reef by a tug boat from Bobbie’s Marina in St. Maarten.

The yacht aground in Island Harbour Bay

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