Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: WHO YA GONNA CALL?

by Hazed

If you're plagued by malevolent spirits then of course you call the Ghostbusters team. But for more mundane problems, when you get into trouble, the most logical thing to do is holler for the emergency services. Now that everybody has a mobile phone, you're only a ring away from calling for the police, the fire brigade, an ambulance or whatever the most logical service to help you out of your particular difficult is.

But not Atlantic sailor Alan Thompson. No, when he got into trouble in the middle of the ocean, he called his local pub!

Mr Thompson was an experienced sailor who set out to sail a new yacht he had just bought from Florida home to England - on his own. He had crossed the Atlantic before, twice, but both times with a crew, and more to the point, twenty years ago.

Disaster struck when he was about 600 miles northeast of Bermuda: he slipped and broke his pelvis. In severe pain, and hardly able to move, he managed to use his cell phone to call the Bull's Head in Fishbourne, West Sussex, on England's south coast. The licensee of the pub, Roger Pocock, was a friend of Mr Thompson and he alerted the Falmouth coastguards. They located the yacht and organized a rescue operation by the US coastguard. Within two hours of his call to the pub, two coastguards were airlifted onto the yacht to help the owner abandon the vessel and climb aboard an oil tanker than had responded to a mayday alert.

Mr Thompson will almost certainly never see the boat again because it will quite likely sink. Which is a big shame, because he paid $33,000 for it, and it's not insured. He was understandably upset about having to abandon her, but had no choice because of his injuries. No doubt once he gets home, he'll be drowning his sorrows in the pub that came to his rescue.

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