The bodies of a thrill-seeking Canadian couple were reportedly discovered inside a life raft on Wednesday, about six weeks after they set off on a trans-Atlantic voyage.
Brett Clivery, 70, and Sarah Justine Packwood, 54, appear to have died before abandoning the yacht and being washed ashore in a life raft on Sable Island, nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” The Vancouver Sun reported.
Canadian authorities have not officially identified the tragic couple as the victims, but have told media that the 10-foot-long life raft appears to have come from a larger vessel named “Telos” – the same eco-friendly boat the couple regularly documented on their travel blog account.
Clivery and Packwood set sail from Halifax in a 39-foot yacht on June 11 and planned to cross the Atlantic by July 2 for the Azores, 900 miles west of Portugal.
The pair documented their travels on YouTube channel Theros Adventures, showing how they travel the world in a boat powered by electricity, wind and solar power.
The trip to the Azores was meant to be the Cerros’ first completely “green” trip: having removed the diesel engine, the couple named it “Green Odyssey.”
They had previously attempted to cross the Atlantic in the boat in 2019 but were thwarted by forecasts of storms.
On the day of the trip, Clivery and Packwood shared a video showing them 16 nautical miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, with fair winds and calm seas.
This video was the last of them to be seen; they were reported missing a week later.
Sable Island is about 175 miles south of Halifax.
Theros is still missing, The Times Colonist reported.
What happened and why the couple abandoned their beloved boat remains a mystery.
The couple married on a yacht in 2016, a year after meeting by chance at a bus stop in London, England.
Packwood met Clivery, who was visiting from Canada, when she was preparing to donate a kidney to her sister. The heartwarming story is told in The Guardian’s “How We Met” article from 2020.
“Since then, we’ve been traveling and creating adventures together,” Packwood wrote in a previous YouTube post.
