A life raft with the body of a German man has been found off the coast of the Atlantic island of Porto Santo. There is no trace of his boat, the Contest 37 "Tortuga", or of a fellow sailor. The Portuguese sea rescuers have little hope of finding the man and the ship. They told YACHT online that there are "certain signs" that the 11.40 metre-long sloop has sunk. However, the ship and crew are still officially missing.
The sailing yacht set off from Albufeira in the Portuguese Algarve on 28 December, bound for Madeira. Porto Santo is part of the Madeira archipelago and is just under 30 miles from the main island. The distance from the starting harbour to the cruise destination was just under 500 nautical miles, general course southwest.
Large-scale search, but no contact with the yacht
After the "Tortuga" arrived in Madeira late, relatives of the skipper informed the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Lisbon with a request to search for the overdue vessel. The MRCC in turn asked the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Bremen for information about the yacht and crew during the night of 9 to 10 January. A large-scale search was launched on the water, in the air and also on land on the islands.
All attempts to make contact with the ship were unsuccessful. The MRCC Lisbon asked all shipping in the sea area for assistance and special attention, but this was also unsuccessful. On the other hand, the crew of the sailing yacht were also unable to make themselves known in any way; a distress alarm, for example, was apparently not triggered or not picked up.
It was not until days later, on the night of 15 to 16 January, that the Maritime Rescue Sub-Centre (MRSC) in Funchal, a branch of the Portuguese Maritime Rescue Service in Madeira, informed the authorities involved that the life raft with the dead sailor had been found. According to YACHT information, the man, 67 years old, is a retired secondary school teacher for biology and sport from Constance. His lost co-sailor is a retired police officer from Mahlberg in the Ortenau district (Baden-Württemberg).
Mystery surrounding the accident
The cause of the owner's death is still officially unknown, and the circumstances of the accident remain a mystery - there is still no information available. Photos of the intact yacht show that the life raft in which the owner was later found was stowed aft of the equipment and antenna support. It remains a mystery as to why the man had changed his position, as the weather situation and its development were almost perfect during the course of the trip.
Kiel-based marine weather specialist Dr Meeno Schrader has reconstructed the "best sailing conditions" for the period in question from the meteorological data. At the start in Portugal, the wind was blowing at 25 knots from the east, which meant ideal room-sheet sailing. The temperatures were pleasant, 17 to 18 degrees Celsius. The wind soon died on the course to Madeira and turned slightly right. The air pressure remained high. It only freshened up again towards the end of the usual sailing time for this trip, but by no means to a threatening extent. "There was no bad weather anywhere on the days in question," says Schrader. At two to three metres in a long swell, the swell shouldn't have been a problem at all either.
As things stand at present, it could therefore be difficult to provide a conclusive explanation of what happened on this fateful voyage.
