International rescue reunites businessman with his BlackBerry

IT HAS been called the "crackberry", so dependent are their owners on it. And the lengths to which one man went to be reunited with his BlackBerry mobile phone stretched across the Irish Sea and involved hiring a boat at a cost of £360.

When Harald Baum, a German businessman on a sailing holiday in Scotland, arrived in Oban only to realise his beloved BlackBerry was stranded back in Northern Ireland, an extraordinary rescue operation was launched.

The phone, which had been left at the Irish Sailing Club at Redbay, was at first collected by an off-duty policeman who offered to sail across the Irish Sea to Campbeltown. After arrival, the officer then drove up to Crinan where he passed the phone, like a relay race baton, to Struan Smith, who runs Coastal Connections, a boat hire firm. Mr Smith then took the BlackBerry by a Rigid Inflatable Boat out to Mr Baum's yacht, anchored at Oban.

Mr Baum, 69, of Hamburg, the managing director of global yachting insurance company Pantaenius, said: "I had headed north and was near Oban, when I realised I didn't have my phone. It was my fault, I had left it in the sailing club clubhouse, but it is absolutely important to me as I have to be in contact with all my offices all the time."

And so the James Bond-style retrieval mission swung into action.

"It all started about midday and I had my phone back by eight o'clock that night," said Mr Baum. "It was a fantastic adventure. We had to hire the boat, but it was definitely worth it."

Coastal Connections offers a round-the-clock charter facility around the west coast of Scotland in the style of a fourth emergency service. Mr Smith said: "I met Mr Baum briefly in Oban when I took the phone to him. He was really happy, over the moon, when he got it back.

"It cost him 360 to charter our boat for half a day, but he didn't bat an eyelid. It's certainly the most unusual thing I have had to collect on the boat.

"I would estimate that the phone's journey was about 100 miles, because it's 33 nautical miles from Redbay to Campbeltown, about 40 road miles from Campbeltown to Crinan and another 24 nautical miles from Crinan to Oban."

He added: "Mr Baum was at Craobh Marina, south of Oban, when they rang and we said we could do the job. He didn't want to sail south as they were heading for the north of Scotland, so they went on to Oban. I had to pick up one of his crew members in Oban and then we went down to Crinan. Someone else had sailed the phone across from Redbay to Campbeltown and driven it up from Campbeltown to Crinan.

"The man who drove it up gave the phone to me and he told me it had been quite a rough crossing from Redbay and some of the crew were sick."

The reunion with the phone was not the only happy ending in Mr Baum's holiday, as he won the trophy for the highest placed owner-driver at this year's Swan European Regatta at Cowes.