Cruising legend Pete Hill loses wife Carly off coast of South Africa

by Charles Doane & Sail-World.com on 5 Jul 2015 Pete and Carley Hill, who departed Durban, South Africa, bound for Madagascar on Thursday aboard their 33-foot junk-rigged wood-epoxy catamaran Oryx.

Pete Hill reportedly went below for a nap on Friday morning while the boat was still just six miles off the South African coast, and when he awoke Carly was gone. After a fruitless two-day search by South African authorities, Carly Hill, age 58, is now presumed to be dead.

Pete Hill, now age 65, has been a full-time liveaboard bluewater cruiser for all his adult life and has long been an avid proponent of junk rigs. He and Carly built their latest boat, a modified KD 860 design by Bernd Kohler, in England during 2012 and since then the two of them have cruised in the boat across the Atlantic to Brazil via the Canaries and Cape Verdes and from there to South Africa.

Carly, a native of South Africa, had chronicled their adventures on both her Facebook page and on her blog.

A statement from Pete Hill regarding the loss of his wife has been circulated today:

I am very sorry to have to tell you that on Friday 19th June Carly was lost at sea.

We set sail from Durban on the Thursday towards Madagascar and by Friday morning we were about 50 miles NE of Durban. After breakfast together I turned in at eight o’clock to catch up on my sleep and woke again at 10 o’clock.

The sailor's worst nightmare, Carly was no longer on board.

The wind was blowing westerly at 10 to 12 knots with a moderate sea on a clear sunny day and Oryx was sailing at about 5.5 knots under the self-steering. I dropped the sails and tried an all ships mayday on the VHF, but with no replies and no ships in sight. We were 6.5 miles off the coast and had no mobile phone reception.

The Navionics tablet app had been running our course so I decided to run back along our track under engine to try and find her. I searched until I arrived back at our pre 0800 position and then went inshore to call for help by telephone. I contacted the NSRI (National Sea Rescue Institute) who started to organise an air and sea search. I went back out and started a zig-zag search back along our track.

A couple of hours later three helicopters arrived and started a search pattern and shortly afterwards two NSRI rescue boats arrived from Durban. I later found out that there was also a light aircraft searching at a higher altitude (with thermal imaging and surface radar).

At last light, the search was called off for the night and I went inshore to anchor for the night.

The next morning I went back out to the track and continued the search heading SW and was shortly joined by the two NSRI boats. They had to return to Durban at noon because of low fuel while I continued the search until the sunset when I sailed back to Durban.

The NSRI coordinated the search using unprecedented resources in a very efficient manner, but we failed to find Carly.

The only small consolation is that in the last few weeks Carly has spent a lot of time with her daughter Irene and more recently with her son Dylan, who lives in Durban, and especially, much time with her delightful three year old granddaughter Hannah.