#Offshore - Almost 60,000 people have signed an online petition urging the US Coastguard to resume its search for four British offshore sailors feared lost after their yacht disappeared midway across the Atlantic last week.
As reported yesterday on Afloat.ie, the Cheeki Rafiki was returning to the UK from Antigua in the West Indies when it got into difficulty on Thursday 15 May, with all contact lost the following day.
Its last known heading was the Azores, and US and Canadian search teams combed a 4,000 square mile section of the Atlantic between there and Antigua over the weekend.
The search was suspended after two days with no signs of life, a spokesperson for the US Coastguard saying: "We believe that we would have found them by now if we were going to find them."
But as Practical Boat Owner reports, friends and family of the missing crew -Paul Goslin, Steve Warren, James Male and skipper Andrew Bridge - have called on the search to continue and give them a chance to be found despite the rough conditions at sea, with evidence suggesting the four made it to their life raft.
The hull of their 40ft racing yacht is believed to have been spotted by a container ship, which passed a vessel of its description upturned in the mid Atlantic.
Practical Boat Owner has much more on the story HERE.
