‘No hope’ of missing sailor being alive
Print Edition
CHINESE sailor Guo Chuan is certain to be dead after having gone missing in the Pacific for nine days, a French expert said.
The 51-year-old Chinese mariner disappeared on October 25 while attempting to sail from San Francisco to Shanghai in 20 days or less to set a new solo trans-Pacific world record.
“There is no chance that Guo Chuan is still alive,” senior French sailing weather analyst Christian Dumart said in an e-mail on Thursday. “We had a lot of exchanges with Dr Jean Yves Chauve, one of the world specialists in sea survival. He said there is no chance after 48 hours for a person who is not wearing a survival suit or a diving suit,” Dumart added.
A skipper rarely wore a survival suit or diving suit, he said. It was therefore hard for a single-handed sailor to survive when he fell overboard, according to Dumart.
“It takes a few hours for people onshore to realize that an accident has happened, and nobody knows the exact place where the accident happened. The situation would be exacerbated if the sailor was wounded when thrown into the water, he noted.
“Even if (the rescuers) knew right away that an accident has occurred, it takes several hours for the planes, the helicopters or the closest boat to arrive at the zone of the accident. In Guo Chuan’s case, the boat was about 1,100 kilometers from the closest airport. By the time you get there, the person has started drifting. It is also very difficult to spot a person in the sea,” the French expert said.
He believes finding the Chinese sailor’s body will prove to be very difficult.
“The probability of finding the body in deep seas where you have few boats is very slim. If the body sinks, it will disappear forever. If it floats, it will drift for months in the sea or end up on a beach or a reef, possibly in a deserted place. In the tropics, it will decompose rapidly.
“I have never heard of a single-handed sailor falling off his boat at such a distance from the closest land and being rescued alive,” he added.
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