In October of last year, we posted about the rescue of two sailors and their dogs from the yacht, Sea Nymph. The two women were picked up by the dock landing ship USS Ashland roughly 900 miles southeast of Japan. They had set off from Hawaii bound for Tahiti almost 5 months before and had gotten lost and suffered damage to their engine and rig.

Recently, the Volvo Ocean racer, Turn the Tide on Plastic, competing in Leg 6 of the race from Hong Kong to Auckland, spotted a sailboat with no sails up. The boat turned out to be the abandoned Sea Nymph.  They launched a drone and captured video of the boat and were able to positively identify it as the yacht abandoned last October. 

The two women sailors, Jennifer Appel and Natasha “Tasha” Fuiava, told a strange and not very credible story after they were rescued and forced to abandon the Sea Nymph.  They spoke of storms which disabled their boat, despite there being no record of significant weather in the areas they described. The said that they had become lost and feared death yet never activated the EPIRB carried aboard the boat. A story they told of sharks attacking the boat sounded far more like fiction than fact. They sounded unprepared for the voyage and yet managed to have enough food and to make enough water for themselves and their two dogs for five months. 

The good news is that no one died. It will be interesting to see if anyone attempts to salvage the drifting 50-foot Sea Nymph.  Turn the Tide on Plastic’s navigator Brian Thompson comments on sighting the derelict in the video below:

Leg 6 – Abandoned Yacht “Sea Nymph”