SIGHTINGS high seas drifter Once again, a yacht lost months ago has been spotted in mid-ocean on a journey to who-knows-where. You will recall that the Olson 40 Pterodactyl had to be abandoned during the March 29 Doublehanded Farallones Race when, about five miles from the islands on the way home, her owner and crew were both washed overboard by a freak wave. Despite being rescued quickly by a nearby yacht, Luc de Faymoreau and Disun Den Daas were unable to reboard the Olson due to the rough sea state. Neither was the Coast Guard after they arrived on scene. The Coasties did manage to toss an EPIRB aboard Pterodactyl, which tracked the Olson out to approximately the Farallones before it quit or was itself washed overboard. Six weeks later, on the night of May 13, the 650-ft Maltese-flagged bulk carrier MV Namrun had quite a scare when they almost ran down an unlit sailboat on their way from Xiamen, China, to Houston via the Panama Canal. The encounter happened at position 32N, 136W — approximately 900 miles southwest of the Golden Gate. Captain Melih Akgül and his all-Turkish crew turned the ship around and stood by the sailboat while they reported the incident to Coast Guard Honolulu. At daybreak, they were able to read off the name and homeport: Pterodactyl, Moss Landing. By request of the Coasties, Captain Akgül sent a boarding party over to see if anyone was aboard. Finding no one, they gathered a few personal items, again as requested. Having no way to recover or tow Pterodactyl, the 55,000ton Namrun resumed her course for Panama. And Pterodactyl resumed hers, making about 1.5 knots southwest. Upon arrival in Houston, Captain Akgül turned over the personal items from the sailboat (cellphones, laptops and IDs) to the Coast Guard. But they never did tell him the story of what had happened to the boat. Captain Akgül — a sailor himself with a pretty 31-ft gaff-rigged sloop back home in Marmaris — says he worried about what had become of the crew of Pterodactyl the whole rest of the trip after leaving her behind. So while waiting at the airport in Texas for the flight home, he pulled out his laptop and Googled the boat name and hailing port — which popped up ‘Lectronic Latitude reports. He wrote to us straightaway with many of the details you’ve just read, and the main message: “I was relieved that the crew were saved,” Two weeks later, a Navy ship also encountered Pterodactyl, although the person who wrote us did not give a position. As with the Namrun encounter, except for the shredded sails, Pterodactyl seemed to be in fine shape and had not taken on any water. The insurance company ‘bought’ the boat from de Faymoureau in mid-June. He says they have treated him well, for which he’s grateful. But though he’s technically out of the loop, he follows the reports of Pterodactyl sightings with interest. Unfortunately, even if he could have afforded to charter a boat to go after her in the days and weeks following the incident, the chances of her being found, even within days of her last sighting, would be slim. In years past, there have been a handful of similar incidents where boats had to be abandoned outside the Golden Gate. Despite intensive (and expensive) searches by sea and air, none were ever recovered — at least until they came ashore somewhere far away, usually in pieces. There is a fair chance that Pterodactyl might one day be recovered to sail again — assuming she doesn’t hit or get hit by anything first. continued on outside column of next sightings page Page 100 •
Latitude 38
• July, 2008
see how Of all the nautical words used to describe all the various boat types and boat stuff, perhaps none evokes the adventure of sailing so much as ‘schooner’. These tall, elegant craft — supposedly named for how they ‘scooned’ (a Scottish word describing how a flat stone skims across the water) — have long been synonymous with distant tropical anchorages, ‘bones
Endangered species — ‘Pterodactyl’ has been spotted at least twice on her solo trans Pacific crossing. Will she ever be recovered?
