A private air search for the missing Durban yacht Moquini, which disappeared while taking part in the Mauritius-to-Durban yacht race last week, will start on Thursday.
Race organiser Dave Claxton said two pilots and four yachtsmen will be in the Investec Bank-sponsored aircraft that will 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 race organisers last communicated with the crew of the Moquini on Tuesday last week and received an emergency signal on Friday, everyone is positive that the six crew members are still alive.
”We have a huge amount of belief in the boat, the support structures in place and the personnel.”
The search by a C130 Hercules air-force aircraft that had been looking for the yacht since last week was suspended on Tuesday.
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.
Claxton said on two previous occasions in the Mauritius-to-Durban races, yachts had lost their masts and rigs and made it back safely.
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. — Sapa