Sailing Adventure in Theros/Facebook
Brett Clibbery (left) and Sarah Packwood (right), pictured in a 2017 Facebook post
CNN
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A British-Canadian couple attempting to sail across the Atlantic have been found dead on an island off Canada’s east coast.
Brett Clibbery, 70, and his wife, Sarah Packwood, 60, were sailing their 42-foot sailboat, the SV Theros, when their bodies were found in a lifeboat that ran aground on Sable Island, Nova Scotia, according to a statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) released July 12.
The couple left the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on June 11 en route to the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the mid-Atlantic about 2,000 miles away.
They were reported missing on June 18 and their bodies were found on July 10.
It is unclear why the couple abandoned the Theros and boarded a lifeboat. An investigation is ongoing, RCMP said.
CNN has contacted the RCMP for comment.
Sable Island is a 43-km-long sandbar located about 300 km southeast of Halifax. It is known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” and more than 350 shipwrecks have been recorded there since 1583, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Clibbery’s son James paid tribute to his father and Packwood in a Facebook post.
“They were extraordinary people, and nothing can fill the void left by their as yet unexplained deaths,” he wrote.
“Life would not be the same without your wisdom, and your wife has quickly become a model of knowledge and kindness. I miss your smiles. I miss your voices. We will miss you forever.”
Clibbery and Packwood described themselves as adventurous travelers and documented their travels on a YouTube channel called Theros Adventures.
The ill-fated trip was part of what the couple called their “Green Odyssey,” which Clibbery said was intended to show that it is possible to travel long distances without burning fossil fuels.
“We have an electric boat,” Clibbery explained in a video posted to YouTube on May 13. “We charge the motor with solar panels.”
The couple met by chance at a bus stop in London in 2015, when Clibbery was in Britain to donate a kidney to his sister, they told The Guardian newspaper in a 2020 article.
The couple met every day for a few weeks after their first meeting, before Clibbery helped Packwood care for his dying mother and then cared for him after his kidney operation.
They stayed in touch after Clibbery returned to Canada, and Packwood visited him on Salt Spring Island near Vancouver, where the Theros was moored, in the spring of 2016.
“He took me on my first ever yacht trip and I loved it,” Packwood told the Guardian. “Brett proposed to me in the master cabin of the boat.”
