Search stepped up

Press, 18 June 1979, Page 4

Search stepped up

PA Auckland Relatives of the crew of the missing yacht Ponsonby Express will charter private planes to search the! southern New Hebrides this week. Their action comes after an R.N.Z.A.F. Orion scanned the seas at the week-end without success. The Orion

is expected to return to Whenuapai today and will check Kandavu Island and Minerva Reef on the way. It will remain on standby at Whenuapai. Mr Gordon Angus, the brother of the yacht's skipper, Mr Noel Angus, said last evening that a chartered plane would examine a group of six small islands in the southern New Hebrides group which the Orion could not check because of poor visibility. A trust fund organised by an Auckland lawyer (Mr R. Green) who crewed in the boat to Lautoka. has been pledged up to $5OOO. "Everyone from pensioners 'to companies has made hand-

some donations,” said Mr Angus. Search and Rescue authorities are working on the basis that the yacht sank and the crew boarded! a liferaft on the night of May 25, a time of bad! ; weather south of Fiji, i The focus on the southern New Hebrides was •decided after calculating drift and wind directions over subsequent weeks. The island freighter Tui iCakau, which at the be-: !ginning of the month found: wreckage the same colour as the yacht arrived at Auckland yesterday morning. The result of the findings meant the official search was relaunched.