Holidaymakers have told how they saved the life of a drowning woman after a boat capsized in choppy seas off the French coast.
They managed to drag the 55-year-old woman out of the Mediterranean and onto their yacht in a dramatic rescue operation.
But they were unable to reach the woman&apos;s unconscious husband and their 35-year-old son and let off flares and radioed for help to alert the coastguard.
A rescue boat responded to the distress signal and the father and son were rescued from the water. It later emerged that the 65-year-old dad had died.
The drama unfolded on Friday when Stone couple Michael and Diane Goodwin, their son Cliff and his partner Ashley Burton, and family friends Rob and Madelin Wilford were sailing in a yacht. They were faced with dangerous conditions as waves threatened to knock their own boat onto rocks.
Yacht skipper Michael, aged 62, said: “We are desperately sad we didn’t arrive sooner and didn’t get the chance to save the man - but we took action which saved two of them.
“The lady said they had been in the water for about an hour and two other boats had gone past without seeing them. She said she was on the brink of giving up, but her son was encouraging her to keep going, and telling her another boat would be along soon."
Michael is a seasoned sailor who is a retired Staffordshire University dean of computing and engineering. He has sailed around the world raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
Michael added: “We were on our way back to Marseille. The winds were against us, the water was quite disturbed, and it was fairly challenging going.
“One of the crew members spotted something in the water. I was hoping we might see another boat helping them out, but I soon realised it was all down to us.
“We tried to come up alongside them, but the waves kept pushing the bow and powering us away. We threw a rope out and, at the second or third try, the lady managed to grab the rope and haul herself towards us. We eventually managed to get her on board.
The rescue boat was dispatched after Cliff sent a distress signal, made a call on the yacht’s radio and called from his mobile phone.
The rescue of the French family has been reported in a number of newspapers, including La Provence.