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April 2006 That's the good news. 
The bad news comes in two parts. First is obvious from the photo attached, it's in a bit of a mess! It's incredible what 10 weeks at sea can do. The second part is that when it was found by tuna fisherman on April 5th Eclipse was 1000 miles from the nearest land (Acapulco), 1800 miles from Equador (where the fishermen are based), 2200 miles from Panama and over 1100 miles from where we abandoned it. In other words, Eclipse is in the middle of the Pacific! Currently we are in negotiations with the fishing agent over a suitable salvage fee. But we already know that it is going to be expensive to refit Eclipse, because as we feared, the tuna fishermen were not the first to find Eclipse. The first salvors took all the electronics, mainsail, boom and who knows what else. So it will cost thousands in materials alone to get it back to a sailable state. But at least it is still upright and appears to be floating on its marks so cannot be leaking. We will keep you posted. Best wishes Richard Woods Jetti Matzke Editor: Richard called for help using his £380 Irridium satellite phone, which worked when his £400 EPIRB failed. With hindsight he should have left the phone switched on attached to the charger, powered from solar panels. The location of the signal would have pinpointed the missing catamaran. Woods Designs offer quality sailing catamarans for home and professional builders and also rowing and sailing dinghies for home boat builders Click here for the website |
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