It wasn't pirates, but a grisley end for sailors found adrift.

10:27 PM Fri 24 Jul 2009 GMT

'Peter Clarke' .

When Senegalese fishermen found the apparently abandoned yacht Skipper VII drifting 12 miles of the coast of Senegal, the yacht's rudder was jammed and the sails torn. The hull was encrusted with shellfish suggesting the boat had been adrift for over a month.

When the fishermen then found the bodies of the two crew on board, it was thought that the couple had been killed by pirates. However, when a diary was found all that changed.

During an inquest held in Truro in Cornwall this week, experts who examined the bodies had been unable to determine the cause of death because of the state of decomposition of the bodies, but found no evidence of violence or injury.

Instead it was revealed that Peter Clarke, 49, and Sharon Arthurs-Chegini, 46, chronicled their agonising death in a diary, which was found with their bodies.

In the journal Arthurs-Chegini described how the couple drank sea water and urine in a bid to survive.

Sharon Arthurs-Chegini - .. .

'We have been bashed about for days,' she wrote. 'Peter is collapsed in bed. I have been unable to get to him.

'Everything takes huge amounts of energy, having consumed no water yesterday.'

'The lights are going out in my heart,' she wrote.

'We have not eaten for four weeks. I dream of my mum's steak and kidney pie, roast dinner, and sausage and mash.'

The couple had stolen a luxury boat from Mylor harbour in Cornwall in March 2005 and sailed it to the nearby port of Fowey, where they were both arrested and appeared in court.

But they skipped bail and police issued a warrant for their arrest. The couple then stole the Skipper VII from a harbour in Villa Nore, Portugal, and apparently sailed south.

But the Truro coroner, Dr Emma Carlyon, recorded an open verdict, saying there was little evidence to indicate exactly how the pair died other than the diary entries describing a lack of water and food.

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