RCMP work to confirm ID of B.C. sailing couple found dead in lifeboat

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It’s not what was planned for two B.C. retirees who set off last month on a sailing trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

Salt Spring couple Brett Clibbery and Sarah Packwood departed from Halifax on June 11 aboard their 12-metre yacht Theros.

The couple was headed to the Azores, a Portuguese territory in the mid-Atlantic. But Wednesday afternoon, authorities found two bodies inside a three-metre life raft that washed ashore on Sable Island, N.S.

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“It’s believed that it’s the remains of two sailors, both from British Columbia, a man who was 70 years old and a woman, 60 years old,” Nova Scotia RCMP public information officer Guillaume Tremblay said Friday.

Guillaume added the life raft was believed to be from a larger vessel named Theros.

While medical examiners are working to confirm the identities of the bodies, posts flooding the couple’s Facebook page have offered condolences to the family.

Clibbery and Packwood, who documented their travels on various social media platforms, were first reported missing on June 18.

In a video posted to their YouTube channel, Theros Adventures, they announced they would embark on the trip, which they dubbed Green Odyssey, relying on their sails and their auxiliary electric engine, powered by solar panels.

“We’re doing everything we can to show that you can travel without burning fossil fuels,” Clibbery said in the video, posted on April 12.

“It’s probably the biggest adventure of our lives so far,” Packwood added.

They got married on the yacht in 2016, a year after they met during a chance encounter at a bus stop in London, England. At the time, Packwood was in the process of donating a kidney to her sister, Glory, who lived in the U.K. Clibbery was visiting from Salt Spring, according to a U.K. media outlet.

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“We have been travelling and co-creating adventures ever since,” Packwood previously posted on YouTube.

In 2017, the pair sailed from the island, down the west coast of Canada and the U.S., crossing at the Panama Canal and coming back through Nova Scotia. They halted their next trip across the Atlantic in June 2019 due to a forecast of storms.

The last video update posted to the pair’s Facebook was on June 11.

“We’re away from the Nova Scotia Coast, now we’re 16.6 miles from where we started, which is probably 12 miles inshore,” Clibbery said in the video.

“We’re not doing bad, if the winds stay the same as we’re doing right now … so we’ll see — we’re sailing away.”

Clibbery and Packwood were expected to arrive in the Azores on July 2.

sgrochowski@postmedia.com

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