HALIFAX – The U.S. Coast Guard is continuing its efforts to locate the missing captain of HMS Bounty. Capt. Robin Walbridge, 63, has been missing at sea since Monday.
But, the Coast Guard is “actively conducting a search and rescue case and hopes that we can find the missing captain alive,” petty officer Brandyn Hill told Global News in phone interview Wednesday.
He said Coast Guard will maintain the search, taking in several factors.
“They take in many factors like the weather, that person’s fitness, the survival equipment and the results of previous searches, and they use that information to determine how long the Coast Guard will search.”
Walbridge was wearing a life jacket and a survival suit that is designed to protect from cold waters for up to 15 hours.
Hill said the water in the search area is at about 25 C and air temperature at about 18 C. He also said seas have subsided to about 3.7 metres and wind speed has dropped to 48 km/h.
Hill explained the search efforts are now focused 233 kilometres southeast of Hatteras and the search area has expanded to almost 2780 square kilometres.
The crew of a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules helicopter, from Clearwater, Fla., began a daylight search at 7:30 a.m. EDT and will be replaced by another HC-130 aircrew from Air Station Elizabeth City. A high-endurance cutter is also on the scene to search the water.
Capt. Doug Cameron, chief of incident response for the Coast Guard Fifth District, said in a statement “as of now, our intent is to continue searching for the missing person”
Search efforts for Walbridge have been ongoing since the tall ship sunk Monday morning off North Carolina in rough seas caused by what was Hurricane Sandy.
The Coast Guard rescued 14 crew members of the 180-foot three-mast vessel who managed to get into life boats.
Only two crew members of HMS Bounty were left unaccounted for – Walbridge and 42-year-old deckhand Claudene Christian, whose body was pulled from the water later that day.
Christian was spotted around 4:30 p.m. Coast Guard officials said she was unresponsive at the scene and upon arrival at the airport, in Elizabeth City, NC. She was pronounced dead at Elizabeth City’s Albermale Hospital.
HMS Bounty was built at the Smith and Rhuland Shipyard, in Lunenburg, N.S., in 1960. It was featured in the 1962 Marlon Brando film The Mutiny on the Bounty.
The original Bounty was taken over by its crew in 1789, near Tahiti. Claudene Christian was a descendent of one of the original mutineers, Fletcher Christian.
Comments