Sailboat that disappeared with B.C. couple aboard had caught fire off Sable Island

The Theros is seen at the Dartmouth Yacht Club on June 11, 2024. (Source: Marinetraffic.com)

HALIFAX — An investigation has concluded there was a fire aboard a sailboat that disappeared south of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island last summer, leading to the deaths of two people -- an adventurous couple from British Columbia.

The Transportation Safety Board says it looked into the possibility that the sailboat Theros had been struck by a commercial tanker in the area about 280 kilometres southeast of Halifax on June 13. But the board concluded there was no link between the two vessels.

The remains of the two experienced sailors -- 70-year-old James Brett Clibbery and his 54-year-old wife, Sarah Packwood -- were found in a three-metre dinghy washed ashore on Sable Island almost a month later, indicating they had abandoned the sailboat.

The 13-metre Theros has yet to be found.

The safety board’s report says one of the victims was found wearing a flotation suit that had been damaged by fire. “The suit was melted on the left side from top to bottom,” the report says. “The fire damage had occurred while the crew member was wearing the suit; it would not have been possible to don the suit in the damaged condition.”

The other person found in the dinghy was not wearing a flotation suit, but another suit was found in the inflatable boat.

The report says Clibbery and Packwood left Halifax Harbour on June 10 and headed for the Azores, the Portuguese archipelago about 3,200 kilometres to the southeast. Their boat was fitted with an Automatic Identification System (AIS) that was transmitting the vessel’s position to nearby vessels and AIS satellites.

The boat’s AIS system stopped reporting on June 13 and the boat was reported missing on June 18. Its last reported position was 63 kilometres southwest of Sable Island. The boat also had an emergency distress beacon known as an EPIRB but it was not triggered.

After the boat was reported missing, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax tried various means to contact the vessel, but there was no response. “Without a distress signal from the Theros and without it being overdue at its destination, there was no way to determine its status,” the report says.

“Given that the (rescue centre) had not received any alerts from (the beacon) ΓǪ and the Theros had no formal sailing plan with defined expectations for communication from the crew, the absence of communication was not considered a concern.”

By July 2, the Theros had failed to arrive in the Azores as planned. The rescue centre in Halifax dispatched a Canadian Armed Forces Hercules aircraft to the Azores and back to complete a communications and radar search. The centre also deployed an aircraft to search the area around the Theros’s last known position, but there was no sign of the boat or its crew.

The bodies of the two sailors were found just over a week later on July 10.

The rescue centre later determined the predicted course and speed of the Theros would have brought it close to the path of a commercial tanker on June 13, the same day the sailboat’s AIS stopped working. But the safety board collected tracking data indicating that at its closest point, the tanker had passed just under 10 nautical miles from the Theros’s last known position.

“None of the data indicated that the Theros was in the vicinity while the tanker passed south of Sable Island,” the report says.

Clibbery and Packwood, who lived on B.C.‘s Salt Spring Island, had routinely posted details of their trips on a YouTube channel called “Theros Sailing Adventures.” The channel features videos showing sailing trips that extend from Canada’s West Coast to the Panama Canal, and from Central America to the Maritimes. The smiling pair can often be seen on the open ocean aboard their two-masted GibSea yacht, which featured an electric motor powered by an electric car battery and solar panels.

On June 11, Clibbery posted a video on Facebook showing him at the helm of Theros as the boat was about 15 kilometres off Nova Scotia’s south coast, heading southeast at 5.5 knots.

“We’re sailing away,” Clibbery says, the vast sweep of the blue North Atlantic in the background.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2025.

By Michael MacDonald