Three lost in ghost ship mystery

news.com.au ^ | 4-20-2007 | staff writer

[bedolido]

A YACHT has been found drifting off the north Queensland coast with computers running and even food on a table ready to eat - but no crew.

Police said the men, aged 56, 63 and 69, were believed to have left Airlie Beach on Sunday for Western Australia.

[Rodney King]

Pirates steal stuff. If it was pirates, the boat would have all the electronics pulled out, at least.

[Jim Verdolini]

Pirates who took nothing but the crew??

[ladyjane]

They may have bumped into a drug deal.

[goodnesswins]

Thanks....it WAS a question...not a threat.....get a grip

[1rudeboy]

Maybe they had second thoughts? :)

[Wormwood]

The Stars are Right!

[BallyBill]

Saw it on the tube and thought of the movie “Dead Calm”. Guess it was the Aussie connection.

[Hank Kerchief]

Here you go:

http://www.navy.gov.au/spc/semaphore/issue4_2003.html

http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_pirates.html#where_piracy

I have friends in Australia, and in Northern Australia, pirates are a genuine danger, even on land.

Hank

[HawaiianGecko]

I was thinking the same thing.  Starting your engines, slacking sail and tossing your fenders clearly indicate another boat coming alongside. Of course if it was pirates they are pathetically incompetent as not only do they not have the boat, they don't even have the laptop or a full stomach.

[GVnana]

Southeast Asia, and Indonesia in particular, continues to be a haven for pirates. Of the 374 reported cases of piracy across the world last year, 103 were in Indonesian waters. The majority of these occurred when the target vessel was either at anchor or in port. While the bulk of these attacks are cases of theft, a number were hijackings. In most cases pirates used small vessels to carry out their attacks, typically gaining access via ropes or anchor chains. The attack on the MV Limburg has shown that maritime terrorists need only behave like pirates to achieve a successful attack against shipping in Southeast Asian waters.

Wow. If it was pirates, were they looking for cash, drugs?

[rahbert]

Methinks it was a planned dissapearance.

Keep an eye out for them reappearing under new identities
and life insurance payoffs.

[Sensei Ern]

Maybe they’re on an island that has a tunnel leading to Tokyo.

[BenLurkin]

Shades of the Mary Celeste.

[calex59]

Pirates who took nothing but the crew??

Did you ever here of ransom? Ever here of cash carried by the crew? Either on of these could have been taken. Pirates very seldom take the boat, too easy to trace, so they take whatever loose stuff they can sell and all the cash the crew has, including credit cards etc. Sometimes they sink the boat,they almost always the kill the crew and dump them in the ocean. Piracy is rampant today in certain areas.

[Xenalyte]

WHO are the pirates of the seas?



I'm not sure, but this guy claims to be the Monarch of the Seas.

[HawaiianGecko]

Grab this story:

Iran suspected as Marie Celeste 'ghost yacht' found off North Queensland

The ghost yacht was drifting like the Marie Celeste

Australia - (Rioters): Pesky Iranian fundamentalists are once again the top suspects as a mysterious Marie Celeste-type of ghost yacht was found drifting off the North Queensland coast yesterday.

Coastguard services said that the boat was found with its engine running. Below deck a table had been laid for dinner but the vessel was deserted.

Everything else seemed normal apart from one of the sails which was shredded.

Elsewhere on board computers were running, a laptop and radio were on and there was dinner complete with two bottles of Chateauneuf Du Pape on the table ready to eat.

"We suspect the Iranians," Australian Prime Monster John Howard told TV today.

"People don't just disappear into thin air like some fictional UFO has just whisked them off into outer space," he continued.

"Clearly there's more to it than that but I agree it looks an awful lot like that 18th century ghost ship the Marie Celeste.

"Of course, that could have been 18th century Iranians too." 

Then again the URL: http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s3i17586   could leave this article clearly suspect. ;-)

[BenLurkin]

I always wondered about that song.... but he grabbed the poison fig just in time.

So it was okay.

[goodnesswins]

“We suspect the Iranians,” Australian Prime Minister John Howard told TV today.

[jdub]

I read an article in a sailing mag a year or so ago by a guy who did something extremely stupid. He and a friend were in the South Pacific and one of them accidently dropped something important (GPS, I think) overboard and without thinking both of them jumped in to get it, and watched their boat sail happily away without them. Luckily they were only a mile from an inhabited island, and they were able to swim to the boat which foundered on a reef.

There are a lot of oddities to this story. One, no one sails with their fenders out. If they were out, they were planning to come alongside another boat. And only a really bad sailor would leave his mainsail up in such a situation. A sudden gust of wind could make things really dangerous, really quick. And if some boat just all of a sudden comes sailing up to you, you would tend to be aloof rather than welcoming unless you had spoken over the radio and considered them as friendly. If you weren't welcoming them, you wouldn't put out your fenders.

Next, there is no dinghy or liferaft. They just bought the boat, so not having a dinghy might be rational. However having no liferaft whatsoever doesn't sound reasonable to me.

the article says the "engine" was running. Cats have two, plus they might have an auxillary for a generator, but probably not on a boat that size. If just one is running, it may be they were just charging batteries. If both were running, then they were planning on maneuvering. I wish the article had said what the recent weather had been like, it would help with the speculation

[Mordacious]

BTW, neither of the nearest foreign countries to where this boat was found (Solomons and Papua New Guinea) have any Muslims at all.

I'm afraid that you're mistaken about that. The Solomons only have around 200 muzzies, but there are several thousand in PNG.