Here is one for the books. While out shopping the phone rings and the caller tells you his ship is sinking. Oh and it is named Titanic! In the case of Alex Evan, a lifeboat volunteer with Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), it was his friend Mark Corbett. At first Evan thought it was a prank but was convinced it was a real emergency.

Corbett really was on a yacht called Titanic and was calling 4,000 miles away in the Caribbean using a satellite phone to reach him.

According to The Guardian, the yacht was too far from Grenada. listing badly, and short of power. Luckily Corbett remembered the number of his friend in RNLI. Evan took down information about the ship’s position and relayed it on. An hour later a French spotter plane located the yacht and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter arrived later to tow the damaged vessel to port.

Evan tells The Guardian his friend made the right choice to call him. Thanks to his contacts through RNLI, the report was taken seriously. Corbett and his two crewmen all are safe and back in Wales. As for the yacht, was renamed Titanic after its previous owners transferred its old name to a new ship. There is an old sea superstition that renaming a ship makes it unlucky. Unless, as Evan notes, you swim around the ship naked three times telling why the renaming was required (presumably to appease a water god). Yikes! I would rather just toss bottles of rum overboard to appease the spirits than swim around naked in the cold ocean.

Then again angering a sea god can be risky business. Just ask Odysseus. 🙂