It ended well, which is great. But it sounds like he was a hair's breadth from the opposite outcome.

He set off alone in violent weather, he wasn't able to send off an SOS, he lost his backpack of survival gear, and he was rescued only by the good fortune of catching the eye of an attentive pilot.

The winter storms up there, at the top of the Island, are impressively fierce. There's actually a tourist industry where people go (by land) to watch them. Personally, I wouldn't want to be on the water out there, but I'm no sailor.

P.S., a cement hull? Really?