A man from Leigh claims he was ‘lucky to survive’ after a tourist boat smashed into a fishing vessel he was on off the coast of Mexico.
Steve Hill, 60, says he was forced to dive into the water seconds before the collision and that it was ‘sheer luck’ he wasn’t hit by a propeller.
Lifelong fishing fanatic Steve, from Westleigh, paid £15,000 for the trip. He flew from Manchester Airport to Cancun with his partner Michelle for a 10-day holiday on Isla Holbox – an island off the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula – earlier this year.
Click here to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter
It included four days of tarpon fishing in the picturesque Gulf of Mexico on a special flat-bottomed boat. Steve said the final day of fishing was dramatically cut short after another boat ploughed into theirs.
He said he was casting his rod into the waters around two miles from the shoreline when the crash happened at around 7.30am. Steve said a boat on the horizon seemed ‘quite a bit bigger’, carrying around a dozen tourists. It was heading ‘straight towards’ them, he added.
“It didn’t actually cause me much concern at first as I’ve been fishing all my life,” Steve said. “You often see boats in the distance and think they are coming towards you and they actually pass a good few hundred yards away.”
Steve said he soon realised it ‘wasn’t slowing down or changing course’. He began waving and shouting to no avail as his guide, who was driving their boat and was his sole companion, frantically tried to restart the engine, which he wasn’t able to do in time.
“There was no nowhere to go,” Steve added. “I was worried if I dived off left or right, and it turned or took evasive action at the last minute, it would go straight over me.”
“So I just had to hang on until the last minute and hope for the best. It was quite scary.”
Steve said he dived off and caught his shoulder and side on one of the boats. He said he heard an ‘almighty crash’ just as he hit the water, followed by ‘a lot of screaming and shouting’.
Steve claimed the tourist boat went ‘straight over’ theirs, puncturing a hole in it and damaging its leaning rail.
Don’t let an algorithm decide what Manchester news you see – click here to add the MEN as your preferred Google source
He said the impact of the crash ‘jammed’ their boat’s engine, causing it to begin to ‘circle out of control’ close to them in the water.
“It was just sheer luck it didn’t come in our direction and its propeller didn’t get us,” he said. He said his guide was eventually able to clamber back aboard their boat and bring it under control.
Steve said he decided it was safe before they ‘limped back’ to the harbour where they were greeted by the harbour master and bosses from the companies who owned both boats.
Steve said he was offered medical assistance, but he declined as he escaped with a graze and bruising. He said his partner had intended to join him on the boat for sightseeing, before deciding against it at the last minute.
If she had been on the boat, her likely position would have meant it would have been a ‘much worse situation’ and she would have been ‘fortunate to escape in time’, he added.
“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” he said. “I have mixed feelings about it all. Of course, the bigger picture is I am just relieved I wasn’t seriously injured or even killed from the impact or the propeller.
“But all the stars had aligned that day. The conditions were perfect and everything was set up for a really good day’s fishing, which is what I had travelled all that way for. And. although it might seem strange to some for me to say, I feel like I was robbed of that.”
