Aaron Odgers speaks on survival ordeal after boat sinks near Innisfail

Three mates’ fishing trip off the Qld coast turned into a nightmare when their boat sank 50km from land, leaving them with nothing but a hull tip to cling to and a jar of pickled onions to share as “sharks were swimming all around”.

Queensland fisherman Aaron Odgers has recounted the terrifying 20 hours he and two mates spent at sea after their boat flipped off the Cairns coast.

A fishing competition off the Cairns coast was supposed to be a fun way to spend the weekend for Aaron Odgers and two of his mates.

Instead, it turned into an extraordinary tale of survival for the trio after their boat capsized and they were forced to spend almost 20 hours clinging desperately for life to the only tiny piece of the hull still above shark-infested waters.

Speaking on a landline Friday – his own phone was at the bottom of the ocean – Mr Odgers, a Fraser Coast and Gympie man who served 20 years in the navy, recalled the nightmare which unfolded at McCulloch Reef, 50km from shore, on the night of Saturday, November 9.

Mr Odgers and his friends, Kel and Daz were on his 6.5m catamaran “Nuddahwun” at the reef, having set off from shore at 9am on the Friday.

Ex-Navy officer Arron Odgers has spoken on his extraordinary tale of survival after his catamaran sunk off the Cairns coast, leaving him and his two friends clinging for life in the water for more than 20 hours.

About 8pm on Saturday they noticed the starboard side hull was “a bit full of water”.

“I went to pump it, and the electric pump didn’t work,” Mr Odgers said.

He then opened a hand hole in the deck to manually pump the water out, and “at the same time a small wave came straight up the back between the engines”.

The water went down the hole, starting a “terrifying” 20-hour-long fight for survival.

Mr Odgers swiftly started the engines “and tried to get some forward momentum to keep the water out”.

“That was working for quite a while, but we’d gained so much water on the starboard side that it must have gone over the batteries,” he said.

The engines soon cut out, “just sunk and the whole boat followed”.

The trio was left with little more than “a foot, foot and a half” of the front tip of the boat to cling to in the middle of the ocean.

“She was dead vertical, like a sleeping whale,” Mr Odgers said.

Aaron Odgers and his friends were at McCulloch reef, about 50km off the coast, when their vessel sunk.

It was a about “15-20 seconds” from when the engines stopped to when the boat was almost entirely submerged.

He was unable to reach the boat’s EPIRB (emergency position indicating radio position), which he said got stuck behind a chair, nor was he able to reach the boat’s lifesavers in time – they were “stuck inside due to the way (the boat) floated”.

The 53-year-old said several clear thoughts ran through his mind as the vessel sunk: “Terror, shock, life”.

At the forefront was the need “to get my mates clear and back to the boat and hope to have flotation”.

Fuel from the boat then leaked into the water, causing a new problem.

Ex-Navy officer Arron Odgers has spoken on his extraordinary tale of survival after his catamaran sunk off the Cairns coast, leaving him and his two friends clinging for life in the water for more than 20 hours.

“It burnt the shit out of us,” Mr Odgers said.

“It hurt like buggery.”

They were forced to keep moving around the boat to try and find spots where there was minimal fuel leakage.

Not being able to alert anyone to their situation soon proved another challenge.

Mr Odgers said the trio were “dehydrated as buggery”, as well as having suffered sunburn, fuel burn, and cuts from trying to “duck dive” into the sunken cockpit’s broken windscreen in the morning to try and reach the EPIRB and the water bottles.

“We knew we had about 15 hours before anyone noticed we’re gone,” Mr Odgers said, as they were not listed as returning until 11am Sunday.

Sharks were naturally not far from their minds, either.

“As soon as you’re going down you go ‘ah, shit’ … but once the petrol was in the water we sort of thought maybe that will deter sharks,” Mr Odgers said.

“We thought it might be the lesser of two evils.”

They did see 3m-4m long sharks when they “rowed” the sunken boat over to nearby shallows to try and “beach” it to keep it from moving or submerging further on the Sunday about midday.

It was a two-hour effort, he said “and got the 50m we had to move”.

“Sharks were swimming all around us, feeding,” he said.

“Another night would have been a bit scary.”

When the coastguard noticed the trio had failed to return, they called Mr Odgers’ wife Toni to check if she had been in contact.

Mrs Odgers, now aware something had gone wrong out on the water, called Mr Odgers’ friend Buddah who was out playing golf.

Ex-navy officer Arron Odgers has spoken on his extraordinary tale of survival after his catamaran sunk off the Cairns coast, leaving him and his two friends clinging for life in the water for more than 20 hours.

He said Buddah finished his round then came “rushing home” (from about an hours’ drive away), grabbed his boat and his neighbour Bert, and rushed out to where the three were supposed to be.

Buddah and Bert rescued the trio about 5.30pm Sunday, November 10, beating even the coastguard to their submerged vessel.

Mr Odgers said the moment of rescue was “unbelievable”

“A few tears were wept,” he said.

The 53-year-old saw Buddah’s 8m long catamaran on the horizon first.

“It looked like a windsurfer, from what my brain was telling me, cutting through the waves,” Mr Odgers said.

“And I’m going, no, it can’t be.”

It soon became clear it was “definitely something” and he alerted Kel and Daz.

He pointed, asking if it was a boat, and they said “yeah bloody oath it is”.

They eventually turned and headed straight for the trio.

“I looked up and noticed Bert and … I went ‘what the f*** are you doing out here?’ You’re not the coastguard.”

He soon realised who the “legends” were that pulled them out of the water.

The three men all suffered fuel burns from the petrol which leaked into the water around the sunken catamaran.

They were “dehydrated as buggery”, as well as having suffered sunburn, fuel burn, and cuts from trying to “duck dive” into the sunken cockpit’s broken windscreen in the morning to try and reach the EPIRB and the water bottles.

He said those dives were “one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life”.

“The EPIRB would have saved our a--e big time,” Mr Odgers said.

Had he been able to activate it, search and rescue should have been out there “within the hour”.

“That’ll be getting mounted on the outside if I get it back,” he said.

The only thing they recovered that was of any real use was a bottle of pickled onions.

It was all they had to eat while floating and hoping for rescue.

“Well done to the ambulance services … really looking after us well when we got back to the (Deeral) boat ramp,

and the coastguard for looking after us.

“Would have liked them out there a bit earlier, but there was no resources apparently.

“You can only do what you can only do.”

He still hoped to salvage the sunken vessel, not only to recover what he could but to avoid receiving a fine.

He was not one to complain in the circumstances, though.

“We were pretty lucky, I think,” he said.

Originally published as Aaron Odgers speaks on survival ordeal after boat sinks near Innisfail