On 14 December 2017 two Egyptian adventurers, Omar Samra and Omar Nour, set off in a seven-metre row-boat for an unsupported, 3,000 nautical mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
During a particularly perilous swell, the vessel capsizes, destroying most of their supplies. With no other option but to abandon the mission, the men signal for help to a nearby plane…and that is when the trouble started. Here, they retell the story in their own words…
As told to Marco Orsini
Omar Samra: “It was about 4:15pm in the afternoon when I heard the sound of a plane. I remember telling Omar Nour what that think I hear a plane.
Omar Nour: “It sounded like a strange thing to say. Then I unzipped the raft to look up, and we actually saw a fixed-wing plane doing circles around us.”
“It was doing quite big circles, but it was there. I grabbed a flare, opened the flare. And I told Omar, ‘come out, come out!’ I want the plane to see there’s two of us!”
OS: We were waving at them. They didn’t show any sign that they had seen us or hadn’t seen us and what was going through my mind was, ‘is it rotating above us on purpose?’ Because it now looked like it has seen us and now it’s trying to signal to a nearby vessel, or perhaps it’s still trying to look for us.
ON: After a while we were fairly confident that it was circling. We thought it was going to be fine.
We got back inside, we hugged each other. We’re like ‘it’s done. We’re saved! It’s over.’ Half an hour, 45 minutes, then an hour go by. We start to talk about, well, what if they didn’t see us? What’s the plan here? How does a plane even rescue people in a life raft? As we’re thinking these thoughts, the plane disappears. There’s a moment of sheer panic. It goes from maybe they didn’t see us to two options. Either the plane has found someone coming to our aid and that’s why it’s decided to leave or maybe it’s run out of fuel. And it’s going back to refuel. It’s going to be hours before it comes back. And who knows if it will find us again.
Nikki Holter [Event Coordinator, Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge]: I think it was about two o’clock in the afternoon when we got confirmation that the search and rescue plane had gone over the last known position of the beacons and had seen the vessel and the vessel was upturned. They had sent a photo back and we could see that the life raft was attached. At this point there was no confirmation of sight. They hadn’t seen either of them.
ON: Soon after, even though we could no longer see a plane, I saw one of the most beautiful sights in my life, a 200 meter glorious ship. It was about 50 meter high, it was humongous, and it was heading straight at us.
Fahad Talkan [Captain of the Kefalonia Vessel]: We received receive telephone call from Las Palmas, Morocco that this ship needs assistance. I asked him, what kind of assistance? They told me we don’t know, can you go this position. I checked the position, and it was 50 miles from our ship, and it is 500 miles from Las Palmas.
OS: The ship starts to get closer, we can read the writing on the side of the ship and says Kefalonia.
FT: From the moment I got this call, I spent four hours to reach this position. But I could not see the boat. Because really, we have very rough sea.
OS: With ship of that size, they would need to launch a ramp or a smaller lifeboat vessel that could come to your aid. We were sitting there, all smiles, waiting for this vessel to come closer. And it’s getting closer and closer. And there’s no lifeboat.
ON: We’re thinking, why haven’t they deployed the rescue vessel? Why isn’t the vessel coming?
FT: I tried to rescue them by rescue boat. But I found the after we lowered it, I found it was too dangerous for our crew to do this. So I proceed slowly, lowering our speeds until we were reached. And we threw down some rope.
ON: We didn’t think that one through. How does a 200-meter ship catch a two-by-two meter life raft in extremely high seas, with 10 meter waves, without killing them? One of the hardest things when you’re doing a rescue operation is when you can’t talk, and we had no way of communicating with them. We didn’t know what was going on. I’m wasn’t sure that they knew what they were doing. They stared to throw a rope down to us and I thought it was a joke.
FT: We readied the rope about half a mile out, and we started drifting and stopped engine. We had to stop as much as possible when we got close to them. At about five meters away, we sent down the rope. The waves very strong, and it wasn’t working.
OS: If this is Plan A, what does Plan B look like? The guys are throwing us rope. The wind was so strong, it’s 45 knots—that’s about 85 kilometers an hour, and he’s throwing the rope, the rope is coming back at him. Again, he’s trying to throw it down. But it wasn’t even reaching the surface of the water.
ON: I felt confident. I said to myself, ‘you know what? The sun is still out, we still have two hours, we can make it no problem. We can make it for sure’. And then…
OS: They got close. They were very, very close to us and then they missed us. Every time they miss us with a ship of that size, it takes about half an hour for that ship to reorient itself.
ON: They kept on trying. They made over half a dozen attempts. On one of the attempts, we succeeded at catching the rope. They told us to tie the rope. We were on a seven meter wave, which was about 14 meters of displacement. If we tied it up here and the wave comes down, we would dangle on the side of the boat. What’s going to happen then?
OS: This ship weighs 35,000 tonnes. If that ship just leans a little bit to the side, I don’t even understand the physics of it, but it’s going to throw us up in the air or maybe the rope will come toward so strong that they will tilt the raft too quickly. If we stay out here alone, we could die in a few hours, or best-case scenario we die in a few days. If things don’t get any better with this ship, we’re going to die in the next 20 seconds because of this boat.
ON: The boat made another approach and Omar said, look, I’m going to tell them we don’t need help. I said, fine. He stood up and said we don’t want any help. Thank you. We can try again tomorrow. We don’t want help. They said, what do you mean you don’t want help? We said, we don’t want this kind of help. It’s nighttime. You’re going to kill us. Come back tomorrow. They said, we didn’t sail here all day to come here and kill you. You need to tie the rope! We said no. That’s it. And we zipped up the tent and that was it.
FT: We must save these people. There is no any other ship near to us to help them. There is no helicopter. We’re 500km away. Any helicopter would lose fuel too fast and crash. It was only our ship. When I asked for backup help, they told me there is no any other ship for search and rescue. They said, it’s only you.
ON: And the next thing I heard is screams and noise and a thump on the ceiling. I’m like, what’s going on out there?
OS: We unzip the raft, we looked at the ship which had just maneuvered itself so close to us that the steel side of the ship was actually touching the raft.
FT: This took maybe about five times, and we kept failing because their raft is very light.
ON: I look up and all I see is a sheet of metal. And the second officer, I will never forget his face, looks out over the ledge and throws another rope on me. And I catch it and he says, tie it! Tie the rope!
I looked at Omar. And that approach was the perfect approach because they were blocking the waves from us. Although the sea was rough, the ocean was still angry, we were somewhat protected. We looked at each other, we agreed—we have got to tie it.
And they started to pull the whole life raft next to the boat, dragging the life raft to where there was a rope ladder. As they’re dragging the life raft, the life raft starts to collapse, it starts to close in, water starts to go inside. I could feel the pressure, we’re starting to sink, all of a sudden my waist is in the water.
OS: We’re still looking at the guys. We didn’t understand what we needed to do. They told us, you guys need to climb the ladder. We look out first, and we could see the ladder. Nour wears contact lenses, and he’d lost them. He’s got minus 4.25 prescription on one side, and he can’t see the ladder at all. I couldn’t see it at first either.
Eventually, the raft was inching on the side of the ship going backwards. I could start to see the ladder. As soon as I saw the ladder, I realized that the ladder only goes down to about half halfway down the ship. So I tell the guys to bring the ladder down. Then they respond and say, well, that’s as far as it goes. I quickly check to make sure that my legs are not tangled into anything. And then, all of a sudden, I start to just really look at that ladder.
It’s almost like my entire life led up to that one moment. I still didn’t understand how I was going to get up it, but I looked and I could see as the waves were crashing into the ship, the level of the water going higher and lower, that when it’s high
I can just about hold the ladder. The raft was moving quite quickly to the back of the ship. I understood that once I get under the ladder, I’m going to have to jump for it. I’m not going to be able to wait for an opportune moment. We got closer and closer and I could feel my heart racing and I could feel that this—this is it. This is the biggest moment in my life. I’m not tied to the raft, I’m not tied to the ship. If something happens, it’s finished. I only get one chance of this.
ON: He summoned his strength and got up and grabbed the rope and I was sitting next to him as the life raft started to coast by the boat. I watched him leap and grab the ladder. All I’m thinking is, if this guy falls, 10 minutes is all he has. 10 minutes.
OS: I got under the ladder. I jumped, and I caught the second to last rung of the ladder. I’m flailing with my legs trying to get a foothold in the bottom rung, but it’s too close. They’re too close to each other. I can’t do that. I tried to put my legs on the side of the ship. I can’t. It’s too slippery.
ON: It’s swinging, and he’s flying out and banging back into the wall, again and again.
OS: I’m getting very, very desperate. I could tell that I’m not going to be able to hold on for much longer. I started shouting and screaming at the guys that I can’t hold on much longer. I’m slipping.
ON: And the last thing that I saw as I was getting sucked into the back of the boat is Omar with one arm. He screamed, ‘I think I’m gonna let go, I’m gonna let go.’
OS: But then I remembered my daughter Tila.
It was very clear to me at that point that I made a conscious choice to live, to keep going, and that it wasn’t going to end that way.
The next rung was broken, it was just tilted to the side. which meant that I had to reach for the one even higher than that. As this is happening, I hear them saying, ‘slack, slack, slack’, and they dropped the rope a tiny bit, I looked down. At this point, I can’t see Omar anymore. The raft had already moved away. I could see underneath just black, and then just a wave crashing onto the side of the ship. And I could see another wave coming, and it was coming right at me, it was coming even higher.
I look at that wave, and I said to myself, this is my last chance. I have to go for this one last rung. It was very shaky. And I was taking a lot of care and a lot of time to climb the ladder. I didn’t slip, I went up until I was about one or two steps from the deck, and I could feel the people put their hands on my lifejacket. I moved one step forward, and I just threw myself over the side of the boat. Then I could feel them lifting me up, and then putting me on the ground.
But I knew Omar was still down there, so even though I was exhausted, I jumped up I ran to the side of the ship. I could see that he was still in the raft, and he was being pulled towards the ladder.
ON: I was worried that I was going to get minced in the propellers. And as I thought about that, I got in a position where the life raft was getting pushed under the boat. Now my upper body is outside with the thing unzipped, looking out the ocean, and my lower body can feel the pressure of the metal, right against it through the bottom of the life raft. And this is when my voice was primal.
FT: He was afraid, really. He said ‘no, no, I will not come up’. And I told him you must come, we cannot stay here. The waves are too strong, the ship is rolling. I could not wait. He had to come up immediately. We didn’t have time to talk or discuss.
ON: As this is happening, the second officer pumps up again and throws another rope and I find the rope as quickly as I can and start to pull. They pulled me and as this is happening, I see a buoy, a circular buoy being thrown at me and grab it. I take it. I look at it. I wear it. I make sure that nothing is entangled, I don’t want to get caught on something on the boat, and then just dive into the water.
FT: I think he’s panicked, but I think he’s happy. Happy and shocked. He really could not believe when he saw the waves that were so high, the ship rolling, and he was afraid.
ON: I looked up and I’m like, how am I going to go from here to that ladder? It is impossible. When the wave is all the way up, the ladder is another one to two meters higher than me.
OS: We were there on deck. Eight men including myself. Just going one-two-three!
ON: The next thing I know my body is outside of the water. And I’m starting to repel up the boat.
I’m rappelling up the boat and every time they go one two, I jump up, up. One, two, up! When I got to the top, they pulled me out onto the floor as I came up. I looked over and Omar was sitting on a bench. I sat next to him and my legs were just bouncing. I said Look, Omar! My legs are just bouncing and I can’t stop! We just hugged a massive bear hug. the feeling is extremely difficult to verbalize.
OS: How their captain managed to maneuver this 35,000 ton vessel in pure pitch darkness to come and extract this tiny little raft and not run us over and persist with 19 crew members, persist to make sure that we were safe, was just something I will never forget.
FT: All crew really was very, very happy. I cannot find words. It’s really hard to say what the feelings were.
ON: It was the human connection. They saved us and we felt that connection, that really strong connection.
NH: I cannot tell you the relief when my boss called and said they found them and they were on board safely. I just burst into tears. I could not handle it. Just to be able to confirm that they were on board this vessel was amazing.
OS: After the rescue had been completed, we joined the captain and the crew upon the bridge. The captain looked at me and said, ‘listen, I’ll tell you something I haven’t told my officer’. And I was like, what is it? He said, ‘on that last maneuver, the last time I came around, when it was getting dark, and when it had already gotten dark, I knew that I had not been able to successfully pull you guys out. When it was light, I went quickly into the Comms room, and I called my wife.
And I told her, I don’t have time to explain everything that’s going on. But I have two souls in my hands, their lives depend on me. And just pray for me, please pray for me’. And he hung up the phone. And it was emotional enough for me to hear that, because I already knew that it was a grave situation. And I knew that these guys had done so much for us and had not given up on us.
Watch the story told in full in the documentary Beyond The Raging Sea.