Rosemary Nelson Dyche David A. Dyche III Grave concerns for missing schooner: UPDATE 10 Latest media releases 3 July 2013: 5.00pm Bad weather has prevented further searching today for the crew of an American schooner missing en route from New Zealand to Australia. The 21m (70ft) Nina, sailing from Opua in the Bay of Islands to Newcastle with seven people on board, has not been heard from since 4 June. Extensive aerial searches over the past seven days have found no trace of the crew or their vessel or liferaft. Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) Operations Manager John Seward said no search was possible today, due to heavy rain and poor visibility. Mr Seward said RCCNZ has been liaising with the families of those on board Nina, to ensure all those waiting at home for news about the vessel and its crew were kept informed about the progress of the search. Search and rescue officers at RCCNZ are continuing to reassess all the information they have gathered so far. Mr Seward said a decision on whether to continue the search will be made after a full review of the search operation is made overnight and tomorrow. The ocean and shoreline searches have now covered an area totalling more than four times the size of New Zealand. An RNZAF P3 Orion made radar sweeps of broad expanses of the Tasman Sea as far as the Australian coast, and shoreline searches were conducted from Northland south to New Plymouth. Since Sunday, visual searches have been focused on locating a liferaft, targeting areas identified from detailed modeling of drift patterns from the yacht’s last known position on 4 June. Records show that conditions at the vessel’s last known position were very rough, with winds of 80kmh gusting to 110kmh and swells of up to 8m.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 11:11:16 +0000
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