The Tribune

The former mailboat Exuma Pride began her career as His Majesty’s Ship LCG(M)192 before becoming Hjelmeland Fjord in Norway in 1949; she was built in Middlesborough, England in October, 1944.

In The Bahamas, she served Georgetown and the Exuma Cays from 1978 to 1987. The 299-ton steel ship was 300 tons, 155’ long, 23’ wide and 8’ deep. Powered by two Paxman diesel engines of 1,000 hp each, she could make 11.75 knots. With a range of 2,000 miles, she was built of steel as a medium support landing craft. Her wartime crew was 31, but in Norway she could carry 427 passengers and 15 cars.

On delivery, the vessel went straight to lay up in Southampton. In Norway, where there was also a great need for new tonnage in the coastal fleet, so in August 1946 she was sold to shipping agent Leif Storhaug in London, then Bergen owners in Stavanger. In August 1949, skipper Johan Kalheim ran cargo trips as far as Bergen, and a decade later Johan Warland took command.

In September 1978, she was sold to the Exuma Shipping and Transportation Co. of Nassau. On the way from Norway, she suffered engine trouble off Bermuda, and had to be towed to the Bahamas, arriving in August, 1979. A Yorkshireman named John Gynell overseeing Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons civil engineering and construction activities in Exuma.

Exiled to Miami after independence, he managed to return to Exuma as owner of the freighter. For conversion to Bahamian mailboat, she was entrusted to Ray Ward in Providenciales, Turks & Caicos. According to Gynell’s daughter, Helen, “he bought this boat with all his life savings, and put it in service as a mailboat”. Soon, the Exuma Pride took over a night passage route from Nassau to Georgetown.

“Once known as ‘the tyrant of Exuma’,” his daughter writes, “some unknown person or persons with a grudge, set it adrift from the Georgetown dock one night. Since my father was not on the island at the time, there was nothing he could do to stop anyone from salvaging it. So, after it was adrift for the number of hours stated by law, it was stripped. It drifted and ended up” beached at Crab Cay, southeast of town. Mr Gynell’s heart was broken. “He thought he was doing something good for the island, upgrading the old wooden boat to this ship,” Helen said: “he named it the Enrus for the god of the east wind, then Exuma Pride. It is now known locally as the Exuma Shame.”

By 1987, Lloyd’s Register declared the ship’s existence “in doubt”, a step before de-listing her. Previous nicknames include Old Joe. The vessel was wrecked unusually, with at least half of it remaining above water. According to a visiting yachtsman, she was never ‘officially’ commissioned to carry the mails, and “mysteriously slipped her mooring” to run aground. Very close to land – you can still toss a pebble onto it from shore - the site is out of the way, especially since development of Crab Cay stopped, and so the ship is rarely visited, and is easier to find by boat than foot.

Another exotic European wreck lies nearby. In 2022, Exuma online pundits asked about the “very expensive looking abandoned racing boat in a cove between Crab Cay and Great Exuma, just south of the bridge”. A bit of sleuthing reveals that this is a three-hulled, 50-foot boat which was participating in a Trans-Atlantic yacht race from Normandie, France to Guadeloupe, in the French Antilles, named La Route du Café, (coffee route) or TransAt Jacques Vabre. Though the markings are almost all gone six year later, they were once blue and black and read 29, Drekan Groupe. French sailors Eric Defert and Christopher Pratt were rescued from this capsized craft and it drifted, abandoned from the Azores to the Bahamas for nearly two years.

In March 2017, Defert bought the former yacht Crepes Whaou!, built in 2005, 50-feet wide, and three tons. That fall, he brought on Christopher Pratt as the only other crew and on November 5, they set off racing from France to the Caribbean, only to capsized four days later. The race organisers announced that “Drekan Groupe was racing downwind east of the Azores in 25 knot north-easterlies - with violent squalls of 35 knots - and a cross sea. The boat was not under autopilot. Defert and Pratt just had time to get into the cockpit before it turned over completely. They donned their survival suit and triggered their emergency beacon”. The rescue coordination center in Punta Delgada, Azores, warned the race management, and the sailors called ashore to say both were well and 380 miles from Terceira, out of range of a rescue helicopter. The nearest cargo ship was the Dutch Beautriton, 30 miles away, which duly diverted to them, supported by a Portuguese Navy patrol boat.

After VHF contact was made with the yachtsmen, the Dutch rescuers waited till dawn to launch the ship’s lifeboat. They then recovered both sailors, the emergency beacon was shut off, and the location of the abandoned drifting yacht went dark. The cargo ship headed to South Carolina with the crew. The blow was particularly hard on the skipper, “Defert, [who] had a hard time making ends meet the project, calling on local help before leaving Le Havre.” For 17 months yacht drifted some 3,000 nautical miles to Seven Palms’ Beach on the ocean side of Governor’s Harbour, landing there on February 8, 2019. Though still upside down, it was in strong condition.

On February 11, Bahamian salvor Roston McGregor of Valiant Marine Salvages stabilized the wreck until skipper Defert could arrive from France and help make it ready to tow to Exuma. First, they had to flip it right-side up and float it, which took 10 days. There is a film on YouTube by Ocean Addict named “Righting of the trimaran Multi50 Drekan Groupe in The Bahamas”. With “the overall assessment rather good,” they “planned to bring it back by cargo ship to France,” per Pascal of the catamaran Black Lion and Voiles et Voiliers. It was left on a mooring at Crab Cay and inspected on April 30, 2022. When in 2023, I visited the trimaran, the boat was still afloat. Impressive that the mooring has held all this time, and the vessel has not met the same fate as its neighbor, also from Europe: Exuma Pride.