Last week, Dutch couple Waldy, 75, and Ria Finke, 69, were found dead on the beach of the Caribbean island of San Andrés. Two days later, the Colombian coastguard discovered their capsized yacht "Talagoa" without a keel on the Cayo Bolivar reef, 18 nautical miles to the south. Nothing more is known about the accident itself, but the responsible authorities assume that it was an accident. As the couple did not send out a call for help despite having an emergency call button on board, it can be assumed that everything must have happened very quickly. Above all, it remains unclear how and why the 48-foot steel boat lost its keel.
On 25 March, the couple left the port of Colón in Panama and set course for the Colombian island of Providencia, located a few kilometres north of San Andrés. Both islands are part of Colombian territory, but are located to the east of Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea. On this day, Waldy sent the last sign of life from both of them. As daughter Marinka told the Dutch daily newspaper "Allgemeen Dagblad", her parents would normally have sent their position every 24 hours. This time, however, there was silence for a few days. Shortly after son Waldemar had officially reported his parents missing, the children received the news that their parents had drowned.
The Dutch couple have been sailing the world's oceans on their yacht "Talagoa" for 15 years. Safety on board was always particularly important to Waldy and Ria. "They didn't go out on the water until they had checked everything. Other sailors sometimes had to laugh about it. They were really very careful," says Marinka. When the couple took their first trip on the "Talagoa" 15 years ago, they were caught in a violent storm with up to 12 Beaufort. However, the yacht survived the North Sea passage effortlessly - her parents have felt safe on her ever since.
