A British couple sailing in the English Channel is asking the world to please not let their close encounter with a Russian warship escalate into World War III, because they have a two-month sailing trip to enjoy and frankly, that would be a real buzzkill.
Jane Kelvey, 69, and her husband Alan, 70, were cruising along on their yacht Bright Future from England to France on Tuesday when they found themselves uncomfortably close to the Admiral Grigorovich, a 409-foot Russian frigate. The warship fired four or five warning shots that Jane described as sounding like "a whipcrack" - because when you hear a gun, you know it's a gun.
“We just don’t want it blown out of all proportion,” Jane told the Guardian on Wednesday. “We don’t want world war three to start because of this, because had it just been the five blasts on their horn, we wouldn’t have reported it. It was just the gunfire that was a little bit surprising.”
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says the Russian vessel fired warning shots to prevent a possible collision after trying to contact the 40-foot British-flagged yacht, which was about 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight, outside UK territorial waters. Russia's defence ministry posted on Telegram that the yacht was on a "dangerous approach" and that warning shots came only after signal flares and sound signals failed.
Jane says that's all nonsense. “We were following our course from Lymington to Cherbourg at about five knots,” she explained. “We were in no danger. We were not about to collide with them. They didn’t appear to be adrift, which is what they’re saying, that they had inability to manoeuvre.”
According to Jane, the yacht had its automatic identification system (AIS) on, so the Russians knew exactly where they were. “They had plenty of opportunity to warn us off,” she said. “They didn’t fire flares, they didn’t get on the radio to us, they just gave five blasts from their horn. We acknowledged by changing our course, and then they did another five blasts, and then they fired the warning shots.” She added that the couple then put their engine on and steered 90 degrees to port to get out of the way, despite having right of way as the stand-on vessel. “We weren’t going to argue with a warship.”
The Kelveys, who retired in 2023 after 40 years running a sign-making business for the NHS, care homes, and even Boris Johnson, contacted the UK Coastguard after the incident. A boat from HMS Tyne came to check on them. Their former production manager, Daniel Murphy, said the couple's unflappable response was typical: “They have a good way of looking at life, they brush off things, they have a stiff upper lip. They’re irreverent and funny.”
Jane, looking ahead to the rest of their trip along the coast of Brittany, summed it up: “It’s worth working hard to get to do this.”