Thursday 18 July 2019


Maralyn Bailey

Maralyn Bailey, who has died aged 61, spent 117 days adrift in the Pacific in a rubber dinghy with her husband Maurice, after their yacht was capsized by a whale off the coast of Guatemala in 1973.

The couple's adventure had begun the previous June when they set off from Southampton aboard their 31 ft yacht, Auralyn, intending to emigrate to New Zealand. Their voyage started well, and Maralyn kept in touch with her widowed mother in England by sending postcards from ports they visited. Her last card arrived in early February 1973, as the Baileys were passing through the Panama Canal. Then, after several weeks of silence, Maralyn's mother began to feel that something must have gone wrong.

In an entry in her diary dated March 4 1973 (but written after the event), Maralyn Bailey recorded how the Auralyn had just passed a whaling vessel when "there was a violent impact. The ship shuddered and there was tearing, splintering wood. We looked at each other. I dashed outside. As I went into the cockpit, I saw, off the stern, a huge whale. Around him the deep blue water was stained red". Looking over the side, the Baileys were horrified to see a huge hole in the hull, below the waterline, through which water was pouring into the cabin.


For the first few days, the Baileys lived on the few tins they had salvaged from their sinking vessel, and on rainwater, which fortunately was in plentiful supply. As their food stocks began to dwindle, the couple took to eating raw turtle, seabirds and fish (including six young sharks) which they caught with their bare hands or by using safety pins as fish hooks.

To keep their spirits up, they played dominoes and cards fashioned out of pages from a notebook; drew up elaborate plans for sumptuous celebratory feasts; and even designed a replacement yacht. Failing rescue, they hoped to drift to the Galapagos Islands; but the weeks passed, and no land came in sight. They waved madly at several ships, but no one saw them.


Eventually they became so badly sunburned, malnourished and dehydrated that they could barely move. They almost certainly would not have survived much longer had not the crew of a Korean fishing boat, the Weolmi, off course while on her way home from a fishing expedition on June 30 1973, become curious about a scarcely distinguishable blob on the horizon. The Korean boat altered course to take a closer look.

By the time the Weolmi had drawn alongside, the Baileys were semi-conscious and could not move unaided. "We hauled them aboard", the boat's skipper, Suh Chung-il, recalled. "They didn't say anything. They just slumped on the deck sobbing with happiness." Their stomachs had shrunk so much that for two days they were unable to take in anything other than liquids. Slowly the Korean crew nursed them back to health, feeding them up and taking it in turns to massage the couple's limbs until movement and strength gradually returned.


The only child of an engineer, Maralyn Bailey was born Maralyn Harrison at Nottingham on April 24 1941; she was brought up at Derby, where she attended Parkfield Cedar High School.

After leaving school she worked as a teacher at Shrewsbury, then joined the Inland Revenue as a tax officer. She met Maurice Bailey, a printer's compositor, in 1962, and they married the following year. After their marriage, they began to dream of starting a new life in New Zealand, and in 1968 they sold their house at Derby and bought a yacht.

Over the next four years, they spent every penny they earned on kitting out the boat. Maralyn Bailey knitted blankets, cushions and bunk covers, while her husband read everything he could about survival techniques. On their fateful voyage, he took with him a proof copy of the last book which he had helped to set in type. It was called Safety and Survival at Sea.

On their return to England, they wrote 117 Days Adrift, a best-selling account of their ordeal, which was published in 1974. In 1975, they set sail once more in a new yacht, the Auralyn II, to study whales in the seas off Patagonia. They undertook several more voyages, living off the royalties from their book and writing articles about their adventures for magazines.

Maurice Bailey always attributed their survival to his wife's tenacity; "She kept morale high when I flagged," he recalled. "When I was prepared to give up hope, she was there beside me." The experience, they both agreed, had given them a closer understanding of each other after 10 years of marriage.



Maralyn Bailey died on May 21. Her husband survives her.


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