"A New Zealand meteorologist took the last known calls from seven people aboard a classic American racing yacht missing in the Tasman: “The weather’s turned nasty, how do we get away from it?”
The phone calls and texts suddenly stopped on June 4. More than three weeks later, searchers say they have grave concerns for the crew on the 84-year-old wooden vessel that went missing while sailing from New Zealand to Australia. Attempts to contact the crew by radio and an intensive Air Force aerial search this week have proved fruitless."
Yes:
American owner David Dyche, 58, his 60-year-old wife, Rosemary and their son David, 17
British man Matthew Wooton, 35, and a 28 year old American man named Kyle
18-year-old American crew member Daniella Wright
73-year-old Evi Nemeth http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10894739
You can’t fix stupid. these people knew what they were doing…and chose an unseaworthy vessel, in some of the most dangerous seas in the world. One guy refused to fly , because it was not green. Sad, but this ranks with climbing Everest solo, without oxygen.
Why would you consider a maintained 80ish year old vessel built for blue water racing unseaworthy? There are a fair amount of wood hulls out in the ocean any given day.
Now sailing without proper communications and navigation aids is foolish. I will agree with that. And they don’t need to run out of water if they have some form of water purification device ranging from a reverse osmosis purifier all the way down to the cutest little hand pump things that slurp in the water and it comes out potable by Katadyn.
A report has been issued recently:
"US based Satellite telephone company Iridium Communications failed to give New Zealand rescuers details of a dramatic final message from a missing yacht Nina until the US State Department intervened, a detailed review of the search effort has revealed.