quote:
Originally posted by PascalG
Sounds like another stupid prank! That far offshore in a 29 footer with no GPS? I don't buy it... Nobody can possibly be that stupid
All I know about it is what's in the article that's linked above, and media reports are notoriously misleading and inaccurate, but:
-It sounds like they got a DF fix, or at least a line of bearing, substantiating the reported offshore position. They said something about radar, no idea what that is about. The overwhelming majority of hoaxes originate on land.
-No GPS screams hoax - almost EVERYONE has -some- kind of GPS nowadays. But they did say 'no working GPS' and that the electronics were failing, then eventually lost comms. The guesstimated (since I'm getting it from a news report) LKP of 60 miles out tells me they weren't on a handheld. key information then lost comms is another age old hallmark of a hoax, but I've seen plenty of legitimate instances where it happened, too.
-Everything else in that news story points at a hoax - no results at all from the admin search, no corroborating overdue or unreported reports.
-The fact that no debris at all has been spotted, again, per the news story, doesn't really mean much. Sailboats generally don't generally leave much of a debris field. Powerboats usually do. And given the winds out here lately, the debris field would dissipate quickly (a mostly submerged object won't be affected by winds anything like a more buoyant, barely submerged object.)
And this abandoning boats thing drives me nuts. Short of fire, there's no good reason at all to abandon a small boat before it abandons you. Absent a fire, you should never be stepping DOWN into a raft or the water. I've had boats sink out from under me - it's no different than walking down the steps into a pool and into the deep end with a life jacket on. A sea monster is NOT going to jump out and pull you down with the boat - if it even sinks at all.
