African race yacht still missing

by Andrew Heathcote/Sail-World on 23 Sep 2005 South African yacht Moquini and six all crew are missing without a trace, having disappeared during the 1,400 nautical mile Mauritius to Durban yacht race.

One of only 12 boats in the fleet, the Fast 42, was one of three yachts registered with the Royal Natal Yacht Club.

Launched in February 2005, the Simonis and Voight designed yacht was amongst the favourites and finished second across the line in the 2005 Vasco da Gama Race.

The race was last held in 1996 and is one of only two ocean races starting in a foreign port and ending in a South African port. The other is the Vasco da Gama race from Maputo to Durban.

Moquini was declared missing last Friday (16 September) after complete communication was lost with the yacht and a very brief signal from her EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) was received, indicating that she may be in some sort of distress.

The Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre (MRCC) in Cape Town assessed the situation last Friday morning and decided to begin a search for the vessel, or the crew of the yacht, who may have taken to their life raft.

A South African Air force C130 long range reconnaissance aircraft was dispatched from Pretoria on Friday afternoon and has been combing the area around the last known position of the yacht since then.

With Search and Rescue authorities having now having suspended their search, race organisers and family are funding ongoing air searches.

The latest news of the search for Moquini is that a private charter flight will take off later today for Madagascar.

The aircraft, an Investec Bank Twin Air, will leave for Madagascar at 12.00pm today. Estimated flying time to Madagascar is five hours. Once there, it will re-fuel, before commencing a beach search along the largely uninhabited southern shore.

This 300-mile stretch of coastline is the nearest land to Moquini’s last reported position.

The rescue committee have surmised that in the event of a serious problem on board Moquini, the crew may have elected to head for the nearest shore and it is this area that they are now going to search.

On board the flight will be sailors who have completed the race in the last few days; John Lupton-Smith (Unleashed), Patrick Rigotti and James Spilsbury (Gumption), along with Tristan Dickerson, brother of Moquini crew member Sheldon Dickerson.

At the moment, in the absence of any facts, sailors are considering scenario's.

The Moquini’s EPIRB was in a locker in the saloon and it is thought that one of the crew, in the early hours of Friday morning just prior to the watch change, inadvertently triggered the EPIRB and immediately switched it off, whilst grabbing for some other item in the same locker. This is a real possibility in a lurching yacht in the dark.

Specialists have been running tests for us on the type of EPIRB used on Moquini and they can now confirm that IF someone had inadvertently switched the unit on manually, it is very difficult to switch off – necessitating the dismantling of the unit to remove it’s battery pack.

However, if the unit was activated by water (here tests were conducted to see if a 'splash' of water would activate the unit or not), it can be stopped by simply removing it from the water.

The possible scenario is that the locker in which it was stored was wet (the crew did confirm in Mauritius that absolutely every locker had water in it), or the unit was up against a wet item of clothing etc, and was activated.

When activated, a very bright white strobe is also activated and this may have alerted the crew, resulting in them removing the EPIRB from the water/wet material.

Another consideration is that in past, Mauritius to Durban race yachts have lost their rig (mast and rigging), with crews erecting a 'jury rig' using bits and pieces of the original mast and rigging, then sailed all the way from Southern Madagascar to Durban!

It takes a long time to sail this way, as control over the yacht and the direction in which you can sail is lessened somewhat, meaning you don't have the sail area you normally do.

If that happened to Moquini, we know they will make landfall - and most likely back in Durban, rather than some outlying area.

Our priority remains firmly that IF the crew are in a liftraft, we need to focus on finding them.

We simply have no way of knowing what their situation is, but we plan for the worst. Clever and talented people have calculated their likely positions based on weather patterns, currents and winds, and plotted possible areas to be searched.

The Indian Ocean is a large sea... the SAAF Aircraft has covered some 3,0000nm of ocean - which sounds massive, but in reality, it relates to a couple of postage stamps on a newspaper's front page.

Airtime is therefore critical in finding our friends out there. That costs money... please help.

Meanwhile, the Air Force’s C130 will not be flying today. Unfortunately they have suspended their search until such time as there is any further compelling reason for them to resume it.

So far they have searched for five days without finding any sign of Moquini or her crew. Yesterday (Wednesday), the MRCC flew on a grid identified by the rescue committee as being a possible area.

Although they found nothing, this was of great value to the search committee, who would otherwise have had to fund a search of that area themselves.

In terms of their fundraising effort, the response to the ‘Moquini Appeal’ has been overwhelming, with $R316,264 raised at last count. That number is surely set to continue climbing. Individuals and companies alike have donated generously in an unprecedented display of unity amongst the sailing community.

One of the least expected donations has come from the well-known KZN boys high school, Kearsney College.

The school organised a ‘Hunger Bust’ earlier in the week, where the pupils went without lunch for a day, instead donating their lunch money to the rescue fund!

In a further fund raising effort, the rescue committee has opened an SMS Line. South African network users are encouraged to SMS the word ‘RESCUE’ to 38205.

Each SMS costs $R10, which goes directly to the ‘Moquini’ Fund. Every $R10 counts; in fact every rand counts, so how about trying to get every contact you have on your phone to send just one SMS to the line?

To date, an area of some 30,000nms has been searched. While this may sound like a lot, viewed in the context of the area of the Indian Ocean that ‘Moquini’ and her crew could be on, it's only the area of postage stamps that would cover the front page of a newspaper!

Airtime is therefore critical.

It’s also extremely expensive, hence the intensity of this fund raising initiative!

The account details for the rescue fund are as follows:

Royal Natal Yacht Club Moquini Fund

Standard Bank Durban

Branch Code 040026 Account No. 050279890

Overseas depositors used the Swift Code ZBZAZAJJ

Meanwhile our thoughts remain with the families of the ‘Moquini’ crew in this trying time!

The crew of six are:

Graham Cochrane - skipper
Neil Tocknell
Sheldon Dickerson
Mark Dickerson
Kurt Ostendorf
Michael Goolam

For further updates on the search for ‘Moquini’ during the course of the day visit www.mauritiustodurban.com