Possible lead in search for missing South African sailors

by Henrid du Plessis on 26 Mar 2015 The families of three South African men who are lost at sea after setting sail from Cape Town on a luxury catamaran yacht for Thailand on December 14 have been given new cause for hope after a crowd search of satellite images appeared to have come up with a possible lead.

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Anthony Murray, 58, Reginald Robertson, 59, and Jaryd Payne, 20, were last heard of on January 18 when the men called family and friends by satellite telephone. At that point the trio were 2,190 nautical miles north-north-west of Perth in Australia.

The yacht should have arrived at Phuket on February 2. It is believed the men had only enough food aboard to last until February 26.

As soon as the families realised their relatives were missing, they set up an international crowd search through the TomNod satellite image search service of the US.

On Tuesday, something significant was found by a large number of the 29,000 people taking part in the online satellite image search. In the latest area identified as a probable search area by experts employed by the Australian Search and Rescue organisation, people spotted a shape not unlike that of a life raft with its door open.

“Our men have not been found,” stressed Diane Coetzer, Anthony Murray’s sister-in-law. “What has happened is that volunteer searchers n the TomNod network have spotted an encouraging feature in the water in a part of the identified search area.

“The Australian Rescue Co-ordination Centre has brought in experts to determine a second search area after the first showed up nothing, and on Tuesday, a number of people spotted an object in the water that could be a life raft.”

Coetzer said the first search area had been covered almost 100 percent and the second area of interest was closer to Mauritius. This area has now also been covered about 73 percent, she said.

The TomNod service has previously been used by volunteers searching through satellite images on the internet from their homes for a missing Malaysian airliner that disappeared while en route to China last year.

Coetzer said the families were containing their hopes until there was more information and until authorities took steps to try and find the object.

“The authorities have the co-ordinates, we do not, so we don’t know where it is,” she said. “They have to decide what to do next.

“But what we can say is how grateful we are for all the people who had made the effort to… help us. While something tangible has been found, the people on the TomNod search… have given us something intangible which is so important… reason to have faith in the good side of humans.”