A RETIRED newspaper editor and public relations executive from the Blackdown Hills above Wellington drowned while snorkelling off a small Caribbean island, an inquest heard.

Gareth Weekes, aged 77, who had lived in Clayhidon for 17 years, died shortly before and his wife Alison were due to return home from a week’s luxury yachting holiday in March, 2023.

The 177-foot yacht, which had 26 other guests and 10 crew, had sailed to an uninhabited island in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Mr and Mrs Weekes and other guests were taken in a dinghy to the beach for them to swim, snorkel, and see turtles.

Senior Devon coroner Philip Spinney, sitting in County Hall, Exeter, heard Mr Weekes was not using flippers because he found them difficult when walking on the beach.

Mr and Mrs Weekes went into the sea together, but Mrs Weekes had problems with her mask misting up and she lost sight of her husband and he was not with her when she came out of the water.

Mrs Weekes told the inquest the dinghy had gone and she asked other tourists to help look for her husband.

She was ‘frantic’ by the time the dinghy returned after 20 minutes and she told the crewman that her husband was missing.

The crewman went back out to sea and found Mr Weekes hanging onto ropes on the edge of the snorkelling zone and took him to the yacht, where he was given CPR but could not be saved.

Mr Spinney heard the yacht’s captain and the Dutch company which organised the holiday said swimming and snorkelling trips were free activities but the risks and responsibilities lay with the guests themselves.

Mrs Weekes said she contested that evidence and believed the sailing company should improve its safety procedures.

She told the hearing the couple had not received any warning from the yacht’s crew about risks from currents.

Mrs Weekes said: “I fully accept his death was accidental.

“But, we had no warnings about currents and no means of communication from the uninhabited island.

“The dinghy disappeared.”

Mrs Weekes said her husband was an ‘adequate swimmer’ and had swum from the yacht in the previous days.

Mr Spinney heard a post mortem showed Mr Weekes had died from drowning but he also had atrial fibrillation heart rhythm disorder and was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

He formally concluded the death of Mr Weekes was ‘accidental’.

Mr Weekes, who only retired from journalism five months earlier, had been editor of one of the Wellington Weekly’s sister newspapers the Tavistock Times, going on to edit the Salisbury Journal and then the Bournemouth Daily Echo before founding public relations firm Deep South Media Ltd in 1998.

Mrs Weekes at the time was chairman of Clayhidon Parish Council, and thought to be the first woman to chair it in more than a century.

She is a former news editor of the Somerset County Gazette newspaper, and was district editor of the Chard and Ilminster News and launch editor of Limited Edition magazine.