Australian sailor and six others still missing in Eastern Pacific

by Nancy Knudsen on 9 Apr 2010 After nearly three months, seven sailors including one Australian are still missing on the sailing yacht the SS Columbia in the eastern Pacific. They include the skipper Boguslaw 'Bob' Norwid and his wife, and their five student sailors - Canadian woman, Josee Chabot, an Australian Mitchell Westlake from the Gold Coast and three others.

Family and friends of the five missing sailors have tried every means imaginable to find the S.S. Columbia on which they were sailing.

They've had coast guard officers search up and down the coast of Chile, where the 13-metre steel sloop was likely to be, but they have had no news whatsoever since the vessel left Salinas, Ecuador, Jan. 16th, with vague plans to arrive in Coquimbo, Chile, around Feb. 27, the day the earthquake hit. They've also put the word out among cruising sailors in the area, with no result.

Josee Chabot's husband, Martin Neufeld, has been in constant touch with the families of the other crew members, some of whom do not want their names revealed. The five were all training with Captain Norwid and his wife to be able to skipper their own boats someday.

Martin was told by Josee that they planned to sail around the Galapagos Islands, though when documentation was later checked, Norwid hadn't paid the requisite fees or included the 1,800-kilometre detour in his official plans submitted to the coast guard in Ecuador.

What is making authorities, families and friends hesitate to be convinced that the vessel is lost is the previous record of the skipper. Commander Victor Ruiz Fernandez, of the Chilean search-and-rescue service in Valparaiso, said they are still actively searching for the vessel, because Norwid, who takes paying students for a living, has a habit of 'slipping under the radar.'

'We can't assume there's been an accident or anything yet,' said Ruiz Fernandez. 'They left Ecuador with no particular direction or destination . . . But I don't believe they are off the coast of Chile. We looked everywhere. We would have found them.'

And the Polish-French national Norwid, Ruiz Fernandez added, routinely arrives 20 to 30 days late at his destination.

In 2002, the same SS Columbia, with the same captain, disappeared for 13 days on its way from Vancouver to Mexico before it finally arrived in Manzanillo.

By then, the U.S., Canadian and Mexican coast guards, as well as sailors up and down the Pacific coast, were looking for waitress Eva Petkovic and the rest of the crew. Upon their return, they explained that they had had to sit out a storm and wait in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for favourable winds

Based on information given by Norwid when he was in Chile last year, Ruiz Fernandez believes the 13 metre steel sailboat was equipped with an emergency beacon — which would automatically go off if the boat was sinking — and a VHF radio.

As the devastating Chilean earthquake occurred just when they had flagged an arrival in Chile, newspapers have reported that it is feared that the yacht was lost in the tsunami which engulfed Chile. However, this is almost certainly spurious information, as confirmed by many yachts who have experienced other tsunamis.

In the ocean, even only a few hundred metres from the shore, the wave is hardly noticeable. If noticed at all it would only be in the form of a slight raising or lowering of the level of the water. It is when the wave encounters the shallow water close to land that the damaging wave forms.

They could be anywhere off the coast, Martin Neufeld added, including near the remote Robinson Crusoe Island — known in Chile as the Juan Fernandez Archipelago, some 300nautical miles off the coast of Valparaiso.

No-one is giving up hope yet.