The following was received from Sumio this morning. Highlights importance of safety equipment at sea:
We are now in Palau.
We had sad accident on the way from Japan to Yap, Micronesia.
One of the crew fell off and been missing…
It happened on Nov.14th at Noon. He was taking shower at the stern of the boat and when he tried to scoop a bucket of the seawater he slipped from the stern deck. He was naked and no harness, no life jacket.
There was two other people (owner and captain) in the cockpit but neither of them saw his falling off to the ocean. When owner saw the stern he realized the crewmember had fallen off and then he saw the person was about 30m away from stern in the ocean.
The boat was under the sail (with Jibtop head sail only) and speed of 8 ~ 9.5 kt. with auto pilot.
Owner immediately shout out to let us know this happened and start to maneuver to boat to back to MOB.
I was in my cabin to pick-up shower goods, I was supposed to take a shower next at the time when MOB happened.
We searched and called Japanese Coast Guard and US Coast Guard in Guam.
We searched until 9:00 pm. and two commercial vessels joined us for extended search using USCG Guam’s new estimated MOB’s location computed with current.
It was too dark and our sailboat is too low to find MOB particularly in heavy rain. Eventually, we decided to stop searching and headed to Yap Island.
Next morning USCG put P3C plain and few commercial vessels went searching. Japanese CG also used their plane over the area on 16th.
We arrived at Yap Island and went to the police station to report the incident/accident.
We maintained communication with USCG and Japan CG but they could not find him after 5 days and they decided to cease the search.
We left Yap Island 4 days ago because of poor anchorage and sailed down to Palau to keep the boat in safe mooring place and we all fly back to Japan. We will flight back to Japan on 8th.
