[Brief] Over the weekend, a sailor was killed off the coast of Queensland when a racing yacht capsized, based on Australian police. 

At about 0500 hours on Sunday morning, an EPIRB related to the yacht activated at a place about 4 nautical miles off Lady Elliot Island, an ecological resort within the Great Barrier Reef about 45 nm off the mainland. The vessel had misplaced its keel and capsized. 

Multiple vessels and police property responded to the scene. RACQ LifeFlight, a helicopter rescue nonprofit based mostly in Queensland, dispatched a rescue plane to the scene. The aircrew discovered that two survivors – a father and son, aged 62 and 27 respectively – had made it safely on prime of the upturned yacht’s hull. They have been winched aboard the helicopter and delivered to an area hospital for analysis. 

Divers search close to the location of the capsizing (Queensland Police)

A 3rd man, aged 65, went lacking within the capsizing, and police divers continued the search. His physique was situated at about 1400 hours native time. 

The Queensland Police didn’t establish the vessel, however Australian crusing group boards and the boat’s earlier proprietor named the yacht because the Sayer 11 racing boat Runaway, a carbon fiber high-performance monohull designed for the 2003 Melbourne-Osaka Race. The vessel reportedly sustained keel harm once before, throughout the 2007 version of the identical occasion.

Keel failures are a uncommon however catastrophic casualty within the yachting world, primarily affecting racing yachts with excessive efficiency keel designs. The most infamous instance was the lack of the yacht Cheeki Rafiki in 2015: the vessel’s bulb keel snapped off, prompting a speedy capsizing that killed all palms on board. 

Runaway (file picture courtesy Rolex Sydney-Hobart)