Rescuers still search for yacht

2005-09-20 15:49

Durban - A fund has been established to launch a private search for the missing yacht Moquini which disappeared while participating in the Mauritius to Durban yacht race last week.

"We've tried to get the best possible minds together to plot where these people could possibly be," race organiser Dave Claxton said on Tuesday.

"We also heard that the airforce might call off the search which is why we've initiated a private project."

The Moquini's crew included skipper Graham Cochrane, Sheldon Dickerson, his cousin Mark Dickerson, Kurt Ostendorf, Neil Tocknell and teenager Michael Goolam. Jacques Smit, search mission co-ordinator at the Maritime Rescue Co-Ordination Centre in Bellville outside Cape Town, said the C130 Hercules would search the area between Durban and Ponto do Ouro on the Mozambican coast on Tuesday.

"The aircraft has 35 hours of flying time left then it has to go back for a service. It does not mean we will call off the search.

"But at this stage we have nothing, no information at all to indicate if she is in distress or if she is all right," Smit said.

The Moquini could have sailed from Madagascar to Ponto do Ouro, then to Durban on what "appeared to be the old race route".

Smit said there were only three yachts left in the race, and part of Tuesday's search was to verify the positions of those yachts in the hope that the Moquini could be somewhere nearby.

The Royal Natal Yacht Club Moquini Fund was set up at the Durban branch of Standard Bank, account number 050279890.

- SAPA