Yacht stranded on ‘wrecking’ beach

A YACHT miraculously escaped the wrecking graveyard clutches of Cefn Sidan Beach Wednesday night.

The vessel endured a life or death struggle against pounding and damaging surf threatening to break it up through storm and tempest over 16 incoming and outgoing tides.

Its owner had been caught out by the long shelving historic wrecking Pembrey beach that has a two-mile tide fall and has been the graveyard of hundreds of vessels down the centuries.

The 26-foot long twin hull leisure craft was left high and dry when grounding on an eight-metre high ebb tide last week en route to Llanstephan.

While the world was watching the mission to salvage the Costa Concordia on the Mediterranean island of Giglio a mini but similar painstakingly difficult operation was playing out on Cefn Sidan Sands.

The yacht was stuck a mile on the Pembrey side of the main entrance to the beach and attracted a huge amount of interest from beach walkers as its sands sucked it deeper into trouble.

Unfortunately with tides reduced to fewer than seven meters high since the stranding on Tuesday,September 10, there had not been enough water to attempt a re-float until Thursday morning (Sept 19) with a 7.9meter tide.

The first 4am refloating operation failed on Tuesday (Sept 17) with the Coastguard intervening and advising the owner to abandon ship because of a Gale Force 7 forecast threatening his and the vessel’s safety.

Ferryside Lifeboat was unable to hold station in the pounding surf and had to find sanctuary in Burry Port Harbour.

Yacht owner Noel Davies, from Alltwen in the Swansea Valley, was trying again last night hoping to take advantage of the higher tides and making the safe haven of Burry Port and regrouping and repairing damage causing by the pounding surf.

He said: “It was a nerve-wracking and distressing time and I was worried the longer it went on the sands would claim another victim.”

But he escaped with Burry Port RNLI accompanying the Kumango to Burry Port Harbour where it was de-masted and for prepared repairs to its keel and rudder.

Mr Davies had been caught out by a sudden squall blowing him into the estuary last week and a failure of his vessel’s head sail. He said: “My progress was so slow I was overtaken by the out tide and left high and dry. Walking off Cefn Sidan was like trying to walk out of the Sahara Desert. It is vast and mind blowing.

“I have nothing but praise for Pembrey Country Park ranger Wyn Parry and Dave Hughes who helped set extra anchors to secure the mooring and enable me to hold station for an eight meter tide to get refloated.”

There were fears the high winds that swept in on Sunday (Sept 15th) might have wrecked the yacht beyond recovery but with the help of Pembrey rangers and Ferryside Lifeboat crew the yacht was secured with extra anchorages..

The longest Blue Flag flying beach in the UK, Cefn Sidan, beloved by sun seekers and all year round visitors, has a sinister graveyard history of floundered vessels down the centuries with the lost of hundreds of seafarers lives.

The eight-miles of sands has 182 recorded wrecks but the sands are thought to have claimed closer to 500 more unrecorded over the centuries with many of the remnants of wrecks well inland under the forestry and airfield as the Peninsula grows seaward at the rate of several metres a year.

One wreck is thought to have been driven ashore just 200 metres from the entrance of Pembrey’s St Illtyd’s Parish Church which is currently more than a mile inland from Cefn Sidan’s tide line. The grave of six seamen who perished in that wreck were accidently unearthed where their remains had been partially preserved in sandy soil in the grounds of the Commercial Inn on Randall Square more than 40 years ago. Carbon testing dated their demise to circa 1694.

Winds are capable of shifting vast tonnages of sands and raising or scouring levels of the massive 22-square miles of beach or dunescape in a day by us much as six-feet up or down in some areas. Cefn Sidan, consequently, has become a paradise for beachcombers as treasures or artefacts are uncovered.

The origin of one massive wreck which has erupted from sands over the last 40 years is much photographed frustratingly its origins remain unknown. When it first reappeared in 1963 only a foot of one spar reared out of the sands. Two massive anchors each weighing a tonne also rising from the sands nearby in recent years and months are also thought to be from this wreck.

It has been labelled the nudists wreck because of its timber spas – which have been carbon tested to early 1800’s – attract warm water pools in summer months. To the dismay of beach owners, Carmarthenshire County Council and regular beach users, the naturists frolic unashamedly in the pools. This wreck is much photographed against stunning sunsets and wins photographic and art competitions worldwide labelled simply as the “unknown wreck.”

Ironically it was the pools gathering around the stranded Kumanga yacht on successive battering tides over the last week that eventually helped save it. The Kumango was floating in its own marooned pool high up the beach waiting for a calm weather tide to help engineer its escape to open sea.

Over recent years there have been finds of a batch of 500 deck chairs, thousands of bottles of sun tan lotion; a drug laden yacht beached; a ship’s container full of new cars; a coconut tree with coconuts still attached and carcasses ranging from narwhal, dolphins and sharks and many maritime, aviation, human, animal and sea creature skeleton remains.