A British-Canadian couple who were attempting to sail across the Atlantic have been found dead on an island off the east coast of Canada.
Brett Clibbery, 70, and his wife, Sarah Packwood, 60, had been sailing on their 42-foot sailboat the SV Theros, but their bodies were found in a lifeboat that washed up on Sable Island, Nova Scotia, according to a statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), published July 12.
The couple left Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia on June 11 en route to the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the mid-Atlantic, around 2,000 miles away.
Waves in the North Atlantic Ocean near Gatklettur, Iceland, March 2020.
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They were reported missing on June 18 and their bodies were found on July 10.
It is not clear why the couple abandoned the Theros and got into a lifeboat. An investigation is ongoing, the RCMP said.
Sable Island is a 27-mile long sandbar around 186 miles southeast of Halifax. It is known as “the graveyard of the Atlantic” and there have been more than 350 recorded shipwrecks there since 1583, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Clibbery’s son James paid tribute to his father and Packwood in a post on Facebook.
“They were amazing people, and there isn’t anything that will fill the hole that has been left by their, so far unexplained passing,” he wrote.
“Living will not be the same without your wisdom, and your wife was quickly becoming a beacon of knowledge, and kindness. I miss your smiles. I miss your voices. You will be forever missed.”
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