The distraught families of the three South African men who went missing on the catamaran Sunsail in January last year have called for a Court of Marine inquiry into the seaworthiness of the wrecked yacht.
Their lawyer has approached the Minister of Transport to convene the inquiry, which would fall under the jurisdiction of the South African Maritime Safety Authority and would be governed by the Merchant Shipping Act 57 of 1951.
The families’ spokeswoman, Diane Coetzer, said they wanted to know if the vessel was appropriate for the scale of the voyage undertaken and sought information about modifications to the original design.
They also wanted to know why the delivery had been scheduled in a high-risk period with unpredictable weather.
A hull, widely accepted as that of the missing catamaran, was found last month off Cape Agulhas.
It was being towed back to Cape Town last Wednesday but apparently the tow broke and it was lost. It’s now believed to have sunk.
A tracking device was put on the hull by the National Sea Rescue Institute, but the signal was lost after 24 hours.
Anthony Murray, 58, Reginald Robertson, 59, and Jaryd Payne, 20, were delivering a Leopard catamaran from Cape Town to Thailand when contact with them was lost during a cyclone on January 18 last year. The delivery was for US-based company Tui Marine.
This week, the sailing community was still pondering the loss of the vessel.
An insider at Robertson and Caine, the company that made the craft, allegedly revealed to fellow sailors all physical deliveries of the catamaran had been stopped since the disaster and the same model was now being transported by ship. Tui Marine said this was not true.
Coetzer said the three families felt Tui Marine had brushed aside their questions.
The company’s representatives were said to have promised to meet them last week and then cancelled at the last minute.
“Since the latest sighting, we have asked repeatedly to meet the company’s representatives. Last Saturday, our lawyers were told the Tui group did not believe a meeting would serve any purpose,” said Coetzer. She said that although distressed and angry, they were not surprised.
“From the outset, our families have had to drive the search and rescue mission – and now the recovery effort. We implored the company to give us information when we realised we had not heard from our men in the days after January 18.
“We were told we were over-reacting and our men had encountered ‘a little bad weather’. We were not told they were in the path of Cyclone Bansi, which reached wind speeds of more than 180km/h.”
Coetzer said they thought they would get closure from the latest sighting of the upturned hull.
“That hull holds the answers to what happened to our loved ones. We needed to see that hull and when it was lost, it crushed us. We’ve been waiting for a year for a breakthrough and when we finally had a chance at closure, it was taken from us,” said Coetzer.
Marion Telsnig, a spokeswoman for Tui Marine, said the families had requested a meeting and they were happy to comply – “either individually or as a group, but Sunsail management is now focused on trying to locate the missing vessel and would prefer any such meeting to take place at a later date”.
Support for the families is growing. On their Facebook page, Searching for Anthony, Reg and Jaryd, they’re raising funds to keep up the search for the hull.
Sunday Tribune