‘The water came in the boat like the Niagara Falls’: How a British sailor survived in an upturned yacht for four days

In January 1997, Tony Bullimore was trapped inside an upturned yacht that was filling up with “bitterly cold” water in one of the remotest parts of the Southern Ocean. In History looks back at an incredible feat of survival, and an amazing rescue.

British sailor Tony Bullimore had just made himself a cup of tea and was settling down to eat some crackers and corned beef in the galley of his racing boat, the Exide Challenger, when he heard the sound of a crack. “The snap was like a match,” he said in a BBC documentary in 1997. That sound was the keel – the flat blade on the yacht’s bottom that kept it right-side up – snapping off. It was then that all hell broke loose. “The yacht turned over in literally a few seconds – three, four, five seconds, the yacht was upside down. I mean, it was as quick as that.”
As the boat rolled over, Bullimore was catapulted out of his seat, somersaulting and landing feet first on the inside of the roof of the yacht’s galley. “The amazing thing was, I was standing all of a sudden on the roof, inside on the roof of the yacht. The roof was now the bottom of the hull. And I’ve got these very big viewing windows and I’m looking down into the sea.”