Hero Ghost Boat Sails 4,500 miles.

by Nancy Knudsen on 10 Jun 2006 There’s an old saying that you should only step UPWARDS to abandon your boat. However the ghost boat which sailed 4,500miles on its own from Costa Rica to Hawaii is only one of a long trail of heroic boats which have long survived their abandoning skippers.

Kevin Dayton, journalist with the Big Island Bureau of the Advertiser in Hawaii reported that the vessel, the Chaton De Foi was sighted a few miles off the southwestern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Fishermen reported the sailing boat drifting a few miles from Miloli’I Village, apparently abandoned, definitely battered and derelict, but still bravely afloat. A Big Island Fire Department rescue crew was lowered onto the deck, and the plucky little boat was rescued – er – salvaged - and towed into port.

The owner, William Teper was driving in his car in California when Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Marsha Delaney reached in on his mobile to convey the news. 'He just about passed out,' reported Delaney.

The story was not atypical. The engine had failed on December 2 last year. When the weather became rough, making it difficult to make repairs, another boat offered to take Teper on board, and he abandoned his yacht. It then took the boat 185 days, or just over six months to make the 4,500 mile journey. That’s an incredible average of over 24 miles a day, even if it went in a straight line, or a lusty 1 knot.

Some of the races where crews have abandoned their boats only to have them towed into port later have been famously reported. In this category are the tragic Fastnet Race of 1979, when 24 boats were abandoned by their crews, and 19 of them made it in the sea alone until they were salvaged. In the infamous 1998 Hobart Race, seven boats were also abandoned and rescued later.

It’s not hard to find other examples.

In November last year a 33 ft sailboat called Sara Gamp had travelled 200 miles in the busy ocean off the Massechusetts Coast before it was washed ashore and got itself stuck on some rocks near Yarmouth on Nova Scotia’s south western coast. Its skipper, Vic Gillings had been rescued by the Coast Guard in a fierce storm, which was too much for the skipper, but obviously not too much for the boat. Later Gillings commented that he wished he hadn’t abandoned her.

In April this year tuna fishermen discovered an abandoned catamaran which had drifted 1000 miles from where it had last been seen. In January, yacht designer Richard Woods and his crewmember were rescued from the 33ft catamaran Eclipse off the coast of Mexico. They decided to abandon their catamaran when the winds reached 52 knots. Unable to get radio responses, they phoned a friend by satellite phone in the UK, who contacted Falmouth Coastguards back in Cornwall. This ultimately let to a rescue by a US Navy Warship. By the time the catamaran was found two months later however, she had acquired another crew. Dozens of sea birds had found a sweet resting place in the middle of the ocean.

The stories go on, but old adages aside, how to decide when to get off the boat is a vexed question. When the rescue helicopter is hovering overhead, the storm is not abating and there’s a life waiting for you back home, what would YOU do?

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