The Jolani, wrecked at Oxwich on 8 October 1981

Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 February 2011 16:42

"The coastguard team fought through boiling surf and force 10 storm to save the lives of two adults and three children trapped helplessly in the 43-foot ketch Jolani."   [Evening Post, Thursday, January 14,1982 - reporting on the award of the Trade Rescue Shield .]

Built with a world cruise in prospect, the Jolani was a duck-egg blue 43-foot yacht with a concrete hull and ketch rig, designed to carry the Dugdale family -  Eric Dugdale, his wife Jenny and three chidren Laura (12), Jon (10) and Nicola (6) -  around the globe.   She had cost them their home and most of their money to build.   She set off Liverpool but had taken a detour to see friends/family in Bristol.   Running into heavy weather she headed for Oxwich Bay and shelter.   During the night an onshore gale set in, the Jolani's moorings broke, and she was driven on to the beach near the Oxwich Pill.   The Mumbles Lifeboat was tasked but could not get near enough inshore to help the stricken vessel as it lay being pounded by the waves, so the local coastguards - including in their number Coastwatch's own Chris Hodgens - effected a desperate rescue .   He remembers driving down from Killay and plunging into the sea.   They made a human chain, linked by a rope, to pass the children ashore, man to man.   But he remembers, up to his neck in raging surf and very cold water, the smaller girl who wouldn't come off the boat without her teddy bear!   The Oxwich company, headed by George Edwards, were awarded the Rescue Shield* by the then Under Secretary for Trade, Iain Sproat, at a ceremony at the Seabeach Hotel in Horton.   Eric Dugdale attended the ceremony and said:

"We shall owe a debt of gratitude to these men for the rest of our lives.   What do you say when you have been handed back your lives by such men as these?  We are all of us very, very grateful to them."