Anyone heard any news about SV Flying Colors?

[XTR]

If you haven't heard of it it's the 54ft Little Harbor with 4 crew that has been missing since the storm on May 8th.

I was making the same run from St. Thomas that they were but one day ahead I think. Count myself as lucky, I got across the stream on the 4th and into the Chessapeak on the Friday 5th. (very glad we sailed on Friday from St. Thomas and didn't wait till Saturday)

Anyway, I'm kinda following this one.

[btrayfors]

XTR,

You were very lucky indeed!

The USCG rescued 9 sailors from 3 sailboats in that storm. One of the boats, a 67-foot aluminum one, turned up on the beach a few days afterwards.

Unfortunately, the news of Flying Colours seems to be pretty bad. The four crewmembers have not been heard from since their 406 EPIRB stopped transmitting, just 3 hours or so after it started. The USCG searched a very large area -- size of Texas -- for many days, but has now suspended the search as they believe the chances of survival are very low.

There's a lot of info re: this case on the Cruiser's Forum: Cruisers & Sailing Forums

Glad you made it OK. What kind of boat? I did the same trip a few years back, after keeping my boat in the VI for 11 years.

Bill

[XTR]

I was crewing a delivery on a Baltic 47.

I looked at the news, I'm thinking that the EPIRB went down with the boat. Very bad.

[btrayfors]

Yeah, me too. I think they had some very serious event, maybe a knockdown or rollover or ???, set off the EPIRB, and 3 hours later were rolled and went down quickly. What's curious is what happened in those 3 hours? There was no distress call via SSB or VHF as far as we know. That suggests to me the first "event" was a rollover or a knockdown and loss of mast and rigging and....antennas.

I hope it's not so. They were good sailors in a superbly built boat. But the facts as we know them and my experience tells me the boat went down quickly, taking the EPIRB and crew with it and leaving very little if any debris.

Bill