Solo Sailor Lucky to Be a Survivor

Nearly three weeks after his harrowing ordeal, penniless but happy to be alive, Bob Medd is able to recall the fondest memories of his nine-month solo sailboat journey along Mexico’s west coast.

His time at anchorage beyond the scenic community of Tenacatita in the southern part of the country was among the best.

It was there that Medd and other sailors heard “a commotion” in the water, dived in and helped free a giant Pacific manta ray caught in a fisherman’s net.

“I was able to climb on its back, cut the net and watch this great animal swim free,” Medd said. “That was a highlight of my trip. But that whole place is a highlight.”

Unfortunately for Medd, however, such highlights remain overpowered by the haunting memory of what happened during his northbound journey on the night of Aug. 12, off a remote stretch of Baja California coastline in the Sea of Cortez near Santa Rosalia.

It was there, Medd said, that he was attacked and robbed by modern-day pirates, who first asked for water, then boarded his boat, slit his throat from ear to ear, bashed him in the head, stole his life savings and left him for dead.

Authorities in Mexico are investigating the incident. Edwin Zazueta Larios, an officer with the judicial police in Santa Rosalia, said this week that he is also investigating the accuracy of Medd’s story, citing conflicting reports from those who were in contact with Medd in the days after his rescue. One, a member of the Red Cross, said Medd claimed to have crashed his boat and cut himself on a cable.

Medd is sticking to his story. He said he didn’t get a good look at his assailants but states that they were Mexican men “in their 20s or 30s, and much stronger than I was.”

Left adrift in the night with his sails up, Medd said, he awoke the next morning to the sound of his boat smashing against the rocks. He gathered his flare gun and flares, a blanket and a jug of water, and stumbled ashore.

Alone on the beach, he sat in a daze, blood oozing from wounds to his head and neck.

He passed out that afternoon and slept through the night. The next morning, weakened by the loss of blood, he began to drift in and out of consciousness.

“At about noon I thought I was done for,” he said. “I laid down and fully expected to die. I made my peace with God and laid down and it was actually pretty calming, to tell the truth. I wrapped a blanket around me and thought that was it.”

That wasn’t the end, of course. Medd’s rescuers were four Mexican fishermen who came ashore to investigate the beached sailboat. They revived him with cool water, took him aboard their skiff and, with Medd’s flare gun, flagged down a passing navy vessel.

“They had never seen a flare gun before,” Medd said of the fishermen. “They all wanted to shoot it, so we fired all five flares. It was pretty hilarious, thinking back.”

Medd, 53, a veteran of the Canadian navy and a retired barge operator from Sidney, British Columbia, was taken to a doctor in Santa Rosalia who cleaned and stitched his wounds, and then to nearby Guerrero Negro.

There, he rested until his son-in-law, Chris Dusseault, drove down to pick him up. During the 400-mile ride to the U.S. border, Medd’s wounds became infected, so after crossing the border he checked into San Clemente Hospital.

Ultimately, Medd ended up at his daughter’s house in Calgary, then at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital, where he was treated last weekend by a plastic surgeon and released on Monday.

“The doctors are calling him the miracle man,” daughter Carrie Medd told the Calgary Herald. “One of the doctors said the cut across his throat was the worst he had seen on someone who lived.”

She also said that a doctor told her, perhaps jokingly, that Medd’s double chin might have kept the knife from severing a primary artery.

Reached for a brief interview Monday afternoon, Bob Medd said that while he was saddened to have lost his boat, his life savings and his dream, he was thankful to have survived and is enjoying the company of his family. He has been saying that all along.

Meanwhile, what happened to him is being talked about throughout the sailing community and might serve as a lesson for other sailors.

While acts of piracy in Mexican waters are rare, they’re not unheard of and sailors, especially those traveling alone, cannot be too cautious in any foreign waters.

Medd had spent nine months south of the border, and while the people he came to know “were some of the finest people I had ever met,” how well did he really know them?

“It’s easy to become very trusting of people in the little poor villages you sail into,” said Nancy Dillman, who has spent the last two years traveling throughout and beyond the Sea of Cortez aboard a 44-foot sailboat with her boyfriend, Chuck Cadigan.

“It’s very natural to invite kids or even families aboard for a soda or meal. You never know if they’ll take it the wrong way; they see this land of plenty [on your boat] and who knows how they’ll react later?”

Dillman, who said this was the first incident of piracy she had heard about in Mexican waters, added that it had been suggested to her by other members of the sailing community that Medd was somewhat naive.

Perhaps his biggest mistake was carrying his life savings aboard his vessel.

Asked how much that was, Medd paused briefly and said, sheepishly, that it was about $100,000 in U.S. currency kept in an envelope to fund a 10-year odyssey to wherever the wind might take him.

Whether that was a factor in his being attacked might never be known. Traveling in a skiff, the men came alongside his sailboat as it was under a slow sail at about 9 p.m., about five miles offshore.

They first asked for water, so he went below to fetch some. Sharing supplies is common among seafarers. Medd said he had no reason to suspect foul play.

The men then came aboard and began demanding money, Medd said. The attack followed and Medd said the details are still cloudy in his mind.

He doesn’t know if the men even found the envelope, “but it was right next to my wallet, so they probably did,” he said.

Meanwhile, his boat, which was not insured, remains unsalvageable on the beach, stripped of everything of value.

As for Medd, he’s faced with the prospect of going back to work on barges, and left with only memories of a dream trip gone bad.

“I was just at the point where I had learned to live off the ocean,” he said. “I would catch fish and would dive down and get clams and lobsters. The clams down there are so good. I really came to love them.”

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Times Staff Writer Alison Trinidad of the Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

Fish Report D14