Sailing's Strangest Moments

It concluded that both commanders had shown poor judgement and recommended that two vessels under steam should always ‘pass each other on the port side’.

Yet the Icelandic sailor had only been trying to say sorry! He’d caused the original damage when he became tangled in Dragon Song’s moorings in the Solent and dragged it behind his own vessel. Spotting the yacht the following year, Olafsson, who had been drinking, sailed across to apologise and promptly careered into it again.

On the deserted Cerf Island he found a derelict fisherman’s cottage but no fresh water, so he lived on pawpaws and coconuts for the next nine days until he was rescued by a fishing boat, which he’d attracted with a flare. In the interim, NCS Challenger had washed up on the beach with the hull surprisingly intact.