Fears mount for catamaran

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 2

Fears mount for catamaran

PA Whangarei Fears are increasing about the fate of eight people who left Opua in a 13m catamaran and who' have , not been heard of for eight weeks. " Mr Dick Taylor, of Christchurch, was the) skipper of the catamaran, Te Pahl, when it left Opua and two other New . Zealanders were in the crew: Stuart Hand, aged 24, of Ohaeawai, Northland, and Karen Young, of Nelson. Te Pahi left Opua bn October 5 and was expected to arrive at. Fiji by about October 20. But mail for the crew members is still waiting for them in Fiji and there has been no sighting of, or radio contact with, the boat since it left Opua. Mr Stuart Hand’s father, Mr Kevin Hand, said that he was extremely concerned about the safety of his son, and the rest of the crew but' that he was still “optimistic". The police had put out a call to try to establish if the boat had been diverted to one of the more remote Pacific islands instead of heading straight to Fiji. Establishing this would take time because there were about 260 islands in the south-west Pacific, some of them remote. The boat might have, been blown off course by high

winds, to end up at a remote island.

Mr Kevin Hand is worried about the fact that Te Pahi did not clear Customs. He said that Mr Taylor had left Opua to go to Whangarei to clear Customs. He said that Mr Taylor had checked on the cost of clearing Customs and had complained of the high cost of the clearing, according to a friend of the crew who had not gone on the trip. . Mr Kevin Hand said it seemed unlikely that Mr Taylor would have gone to the trouble of inquiring about the costs if he (Mr Taylor) had not intended to clear Customs.

He (Mr Kevin Hand) was concerned that something might have happened on the journey from Opua to Whangarei but there had been no sighting of wreckage on the beaches.

The police were doing ail they could and had even alerted Interpol. An amateur radio operator, Mr Colin Busch, of Towai, near Whangarei, also has a theory; about what may have happened to Te Pahi. He Fas been involved in the search for Te Pahi since he was approached by the Customs Department, which was interested in the fact that the boat had left New Zealand without a clearance.

He said that every night for the last three weeks an

inquiry about Te Pahi had been spread round a network of amateur radio operators throughout the Pacific but so far there had been no news of the boat. One of the difficulties was that the network relied on information from yachts in the area but most, of these had already arrived in New Zealand to miss the typhoon season.

Although the catamaran had left Opua with a northerly wind taking it down the coast toward Whangarei, south-westerly winds had prevailed for several days soon after the boat leaving. These winds could have forced the boat offshore and it was possible that the skipper had decided in the circumstances to head for the islands rather than to sail back to New Zealand.

If this had happened the crew members could now find themselves in the unenviable position of being unable to land on any main island because they would be illegal immigrants and could be imprisoned. -, Mr Busch said,- “They probably cannot or do not want to let anyone know where they are.” < He did not know of any weather conditions that had occurred soon after Te Pahi had left New Zealand that could have caused the boat any serious problems.