After half an hour of anxious ignition key turning and button pressing, Joe and Polly's motor boat failed to start. As the wind picked up and big black clouds appeared from nowhere, the couple became anxious to get their boat moving. In the increasing wind the boat pulled up its anchor. Joe and Polly, minds carefully blotting out the thought of sharks, got into the water to try to keep the 20 foot boat from being smashed on the rocks.
Their reactions to the crisis were very different. Joe admitted that quite early on he ran round like a lunatic saying 'we're going to die, we're going to die!'. Polly kept calm and tried to radio the skipper from whom they'd hired the boat. Joe is full of admiration for his wife. 'She just picked up the radio and said 'Mayday!', 'Mayday!', and began giving our position in a terribly confident way.' Unfortunately, the radio cut out before Polly could get the message through. Joe remembers that at that point he thought 'that's it, we've been married for 12 days and we're going to die!' Polly admits that she was scared too but says 'I have this theory that you can never have two people panicking in any situation. Joe always gets there first, so I have to be the calm and collected one ...'
Rescue came eventually. A minute inflatable boat with a tiny outboard motor appeared from nowhere, carrying three enormously fat men and a black labrador! Through a terrible storm, the tiny raft towed Joe and Polly's boat very slowly the 10 miles back to port.
The experience had its benefits - Joe's convinced that he's married exactly the right person, 'Unfortunately I behave the same way, whether I've lost the car keys or whether I'm stranded on a desert island...'
