Yacht coffin shocks Barra lifeboat crew

LIFEBOAT crewmen got the fright of their lives when they boarded a yacht lost in the middle of the night. Lashed to the deck on the American yacht was a black coffin.

The only person on board, skipper Jeffrey Kane, 45, originally from Lawrence in Massachusetts, claimed to the rescuers that his late mother-in-law was at rest in it. Later, to their huge relief he admitted it was empty and was taking it to Norway to put it on the wall of his friend’s theme pub.

The mercy crew from the Isle of Barra were called out to Barrahead at 3.30am yesterday (MONDAY) by coastguards after Kane, a self-employed sailor and mechanic, told them he was lost. He had been heading for Shetland after being at sea since heading off from Boston on May 21.

Last night, as he recovered in the Castlebay Bar, he told how he had a difficult crossing almost rolling the 36ft racing yacht in huge waves last month.

“The boat is 35 years old and she is my home so I go where she goes. I have been through six bad hurricanes in Florida but nothing like that out there. She almost went over on June 9.
“I got off course badly because of the northeast winds and ended up near Barra. I was lost.”

In his role as manager of a band called The Cuban Bohemian Refugee Orchestra, which has now dropped the word Cuban after being recently banned from performing in that country, Jeffrey explained they had used a coffin as a prop in a recent video.

“My friend, band member Frederik Juell, has opened a pub in Norway so I decided to sail there to visit him and I brought the coffin for the wall of the pub, the Rubber Pub Classic in Oslo. I suppose it was a bit spooky for the lifeboat guys to come aboard and just find it on deck.”

Lifeboat coxswain Donald Macleod said: “We couldn’t believe it. The coffin was there just on the deck. I just asked him directly what was in the box. He said ‘oh, it’s just my mother-in-law’. I had an idea that he was kidding but you never know. It was one of these moments in the middle of the night.”

Kane admitted he firstly claimed to them his mother-in-law was in the coffin as a joke and added: “Of course, she wasn’t in the coffin. I don’t even have a mother-in-law. I am single.”

The coxswain said Kane thought he was around the Sound of Harris but, after sailing 3,000 miles in sometimes horrendous conditions, the American could be forgiven for being just 100 miles further south than he thought.

Kane was last night contacting friends in the States some of whom are now expected to fly over to Barra to join him for the island’s annual Fishermen’s Mass on Sunday and to accompany him on the rest of the voyage to Norway.