Adventure goes awry when trimaran trashed on rocky South Barren Island

A boatie halfway through the adventure of a lifetime has lost his $105,000 trimaran and almost his life after it became shipwrecked on an island off the Queensland coast. SEE THE VIDEO

Robert De La Garde was stranded on a rocky island thousands of kilometres from home in the middle of the night.

His hull has been destroyed and 6ft waves were bashing his boat down the reef.

Inside, water was pouring through the roof and electricity was crackling and sparking outside.

Kitchen knives, garbage and broken wooden floorboards were scattered all around the interior and limiting his movements.

And if some stroke of bad luck or misplaced judgement sent him to the ocean outside, the jagged rocks and oysters would have sliced him to ribbons, broken all his bones and dumped him in a watery grave.

Robert De La Garde sailing his 12m trimaran Tiga III before it was shipwrecked on South Barren Island off the Central Queensland coast north of Stanage Bay.

The 67-year-old ex-security guard was halfway through the adventure of a lifetime - sailing down south back towards Byron Bay after doing a massive journey to Airlie Beach in the Tiga III 12m trimaran he spent his all his retirement savings on.

Unfortunately, the boat was uninsured.
“The boat cost me $105,000 and I’ve just spent another $35,000 in the last six months,” Robert said.

“And there’s $9000 of brand new gear on that boat.

“I started at $179,000 and now I’ve got $6000.”

One misguided decision lead him astray.

“I had lost my rubber ducky - it had broken away from my yacht an hour or so earlier,” he said.

“I tried to retrieve it but there was no way because I couldn’t get a hold of it and steer my boat at the same time.
“I approached Barren Island in the dark when I should have approached it in the light.”

By now, Robert was doing his best to return to shore under increasingly difficult circumstances, using instrumentation to navigate and sticking his head outside the window in order to steer.

“I was probably 50 feet from shore but the tide was low and there was one sharp, lone rock that grabbed my port hull,” he said.

“It stopped me dead.”

Cap Rescue 300 responded to Robert De La Garde Trimaran shipwrecked on rocks on South Barren Island. Picture: CapRescue

Once the rock had caught the hull, Robert’s boat began to spin.

This turned his sail inside out and spun his boat backwards into the rocks and shuffled him down the shore.

By this point, it was 7.30pm. He was well and truly stranded in the dark, and his boat was in a bad condition.

“You’ve got five or 6ft waves pushing you down a reef, my port hull started to collapse,” he said.

“Every third or fourth wave was a big one, and it sounded like somebody was outside my boat and hitting it with a sledgehammer.

“And you could hear ‘scrape, scrape, crunch, crunch.’

“The waves were pushing me down the reef sideways.”
Robert began making efforts to make contact with the outside world, but his efforts were fruitless.

“I got onto the radio and started calling mayday… but as marine services have explained, I was in a pretty remote area and the chances are that I was transmitting but they weren’t receiving,” he said.
“By 11.30, I’d given up on all chances of radio communication, and I activated my EPIRB (emergency position-indicating radio beacon).

“Once that was activated, I heard my boat’s name over the radio.

“They were trying to contact me, I tried to contact them but they couldn’t hear me.”

Robert De La Garde sailing his 12m trimaran Tiga III before it was shipwrecked on South Barren Island off the Central Queensland coast north of Stanage Bay.

Robert said he was in a heightened state of awareness as his survival instincts kicked in.

“I wasn’t scared… the adrenaline was pumping.

“All my senses were heightened as much as they could possibly be.

“Every movement or action was planned.

“Crawl across the seat - hang on there - don’t fall in there.” 

Robert explained there were many dangers on the boat.

“I had a knife block with 12 Baccarat knives which had fallen over onto the floor. And that was underwater,” he said.

“The wooden floor panels had come up and there were big bits of wood which were like a metre square and a width by six or seven feet long.

“And the electricity - I’ve got a 240v inverter on my solar system.”

At one point he saw an orange glow that was about a three-inch diameter circle.

“I saw it and thought ‘oh s--t - don’t catch fire’,” he said.

“It started sparking later, and there was smoke in the air.”

Robert said the severity of the situation was clear, and that this awareness kept him alive.

“I knew that I could die,” he said.

“It was the depth of the danger that probably kept me alive.”

Robert De La Garde sailing his 12m trimaran Tiga III before it was shipwrecked on South Barren Island off the Central Queensland coast north of Stanage Bay.

 
Robert was finally rescued around 5.00am when CapRescue discovered his vessel.

“I looked out the window and I saw a spotlight, then I looked over through the other window and I saw a helicopter,” he said.

“So I opened up the hatch, stuck my hand out and started waving.

“And then I climbed out onto the boat and I was watching the helicopter before all of a sudden I heard a voice - ‘you right to go, mate?’

“And I just turned around and thought to myself ‘yeah, I’m ready to go!’.”

Robert said he was not an unexperienced seafarer, and that he had spent his life in the ocean and around boats.
“I’ve been a surfer since I was 14, I’ve owned boats, I’ve spent time on a friend’s boat - he was a professional fisherman and we used to fish off Byron Bay,” he said.

“I’ve been involved with boats and the ocean for most of my life - but for actual sailing, I went sailing with a friend a few years ago and absolutely loved in and decided that was what I was going to do.

“I bought this boat on the 15th of December last year.”

Robert is currently on his way down to Hervey Bay, where he plans to sail north again with a friend to retrieve his belongings, remove toxic chemicals and attempt to have the boat towed to shore.

“This guy has reached out and said that he’ll sail me up here,” he said.

“The boat is still holding 240L of diesel, 45L of petrol and probably 12L of oil.

“This is a major concern to me, because I am an ocean person and I don’t want [those chemicals] in the ocean.

“We will transfer as much fuel from my boat to his boat as possible.”

With all of his savings lost and a life-changing story to tell, Robert was adamant that he wanted to return to South Barren Island one more time.

“I need to go to the boat for closure.”

Originally published as Adventure goes awry when trimaran trashed on rocky South Barren Island