Private search for Dbn yacht
2005-09-21 22:18
Durban - A private air-search for the missing Durban yacht, Moquini, which disappeared while taking part in the Mauritius to Durban yacht race last week is due to start on Thursday.
Race organiser Dave Claxton said two pilots and four yachtsmen would be in the Investec Bank-sponsored aircraft which would leave from Durban International Airport.
"They will fly to Madagascar for two days and do a coastal search just in case the guys have landed on the beach," said Claxton.
He said although they last communicated with the crew of the Moquini on Tuesday last week and received an emergency signal on Friday, everyone was positive the six crew members were still alive.
"We have a huge amount of belief in the boat, the support structures in place and the personnel."
Claxton said on two previous occasions in the Mauritius to Durban races, yachts had lost their masts and rigs and made it back safely.
He said in 1994 the winning yacht struck a whale in Madagascar and put its foresail over the hole, "creating a Band Aid" and then went on to win the race.
On Wednesday the mother of one of the sailors who was on the Moquini said she was positive that her son and the rest of the crew were fine.
"I'm positive of their abilities. I know they don't have full sail power because one of the boats saw them blow their spinnaker and that is why they're so slow," said Gail Dickerson, mother of Sheldon Dickerson.
Sheldon, 29, his second cousin Mark Dickerson, skipper Graham Cochrane, Neil Tocknell, Kurt Ostendorf and teenager Michael Goolam last communicated with the race organisers last week.
However, Dickerson said the sailing fraternity was very close and the families of the missing crew had received calls from around the country.
"The public has been fantastic and I just want everyone to be positive because the crew is exhausted and they need that positive energy," she said.
She said earlier this week she took down a newspaper poster which was on one of the streetlamps in her road to show Sheldon that he had made headlines.
"He's going to arrive here and say what was all the fuss about."
Meanwhile the search by a C130 Hercules Air Force aircraft which had been looking for the yacht since last week was suspended on Tuesday and would return to the Waterkloof air base.
Jacques Smit, the search coordinator for the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Cape Town, said the aircraft would be used for Air Force business on Thursday.
Smit said the aircraft had returned to the area where strobe lights had been spotted on the water on Tuesday night but had found nothing.
"We'll continue making emergency broadcasts to ships in the area once a day," Smit said.
- SAPA