Champion yachtsman Peter Warner has died at the age of 90 after his boat capsized in northern New South Wales on Tuesday morning.
Emergency services were called to Lighthouse Parade, East Ballina, at 8.45am on Tuesday, following reports two people were in the water after a yacht rolled while crossing the Ballina Bar.
“A short time later, a 17-year-old boy assisted a 90-year-old man to shore,” NSW Police said in a statement. “A member of the public commenced CPR on the older man until NSW Ambulance paramedics arrived, but he died at the scene. The boy was not injured.”
Officers from Richmond Police District established a crime scene and commenced inquiries into the circumstances of the incident.
Tributes have since started to pour in for the yachting veteran, with the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia writing on Facebook, “It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing today of an internationally celebrated Australian sailor [and] a close friend of the club.
“Peter Warner was an exceptional blue-water yachtsman [and] won the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race three times aboard his yacht ‘Astor’ during the 1960s. An accomplished author with a passion for the ocean, he is perhaps best remembered for his rescue of six shipwrecked teenage castaways in 1966. Peter was 90. He died this morning doing what he loved best. May he rest in peace.”
It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing today of an internationally celebrated Australian sailor & a close…
Posted by Cruising Yacht Club Of Australia on Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Meanwhile, his daughter Janet Warner also paid tribute to her father, telling The Daily Telegraph, “He was a great seafarer and passed away (Tuesday) morning after a night-time sail up from Yamba on his new boat. The conditions were favourable otherwise he would not have attempted the voyage.”
Despite his three Sydney to Hobart race wins, Peter was probably best known for rescuing a group of marooned Tongan schoolboys in 1966, from what was a remote and supposedly deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. The six castaways in question were on the island for 15 months before Peter stumbled upon them.
In a Women’s Weekly magazine article from 1974, obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald, the veteran sailor opened up about the incredible rescue mission, revealing he only found the schoolboys by chance.
“Idly, I turned my binoculars on this rugged, volcanic island, and saw a burnt-out patch on a cliff. My analytical mind told me that it was unusual for an uninhabited island to have a bushfire. So in we went to investigate,” Warner told the publication.
“Suddenly, among the seabirds, we heard the squawks of humans. The first youth leapt through the surf and hauled himself up on the ship. We flinched. Then he said, in impeccable English, ‘We are six castaways, and we estimate that we have been here for 15 months.'”