Coast Guard Resumes Search off Mass. Coast for Missing Sailors
After a request by the British government, the Coast Guard resumed a search Tuesday, May 20, for four missing British sailors whose sailboat, “Cheeki Rafiki,’’ capsized 1,000 miles off Massachusetts.
The men were trying to return to the United Kingdom from Bermuda Thursday, May 15, when skipper Andrew Bridge, 21, reported to the Coast Guard that their boat was taking water from an unknown leak.
On Friday morning, the yacht training and charter firm Stormforce Coaching lost all contact with the crew.
In a Boston Globe interview with Louise Nicholls, a spokeswoman for the Royal Yachting Association, Nicholls reported that the four men — Bridge, James Male, 23, Paul Goslin, 56, and Steve Warren, 52, were experienced offshore sailors.
Saturday, Coast Guard News released a statement saying that the crew of a 1,000-foot container ship Maersk Kure found an overturned hull that matched the description of the missing boat, but that there was no sign of the missing sailors.
The resumption of the search came after thousands of signatures were gathered on a change.org petition saying that the Coast Guard had done a “fantastic job’’ searching for the crew, but that many hoped they would give it more time.
The petition had 235,718 signatures Wednesday afternoon.
The Globe reported that two Coast Guard planes, a Canadian military plane, a Coast Guard cutter and five commercial ships are headed to the 4,100-square-mile search area.
The creator of the petition, Nicola Evans of Belvedere, U.K., wrote on the petition’s site that she was a friend of Bridge’s and had sailed on the Cheeki Rafiki with him last summer.
Evans wrote an update upon finding out that the Coast Guard would be resuming the search: “This is amazing. I’m overwhelmed.’’
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