Australian authorities are providing assistance to the family of a South Australian woman who is suspected to have died while sailing off the east coast of Africa.<\/p>\n
Deirdre \u201cCookie\u201d Sibly, 67, from Port Lincoln, had departed from Reunion Island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, in June. She was travelling with her friend, Pascal Mahe, a French national, on his yacht and the pair had intended to sail to South Africa.<\/p>\n
Sue Good, Sibly\u2019s older sister, said that on Wednesday evening local time a distress call was made from the yacht \u2013 named the Acteon \u2013 in the Mozambique channel, about halfway between Madagascar and Mozambique. The vessel was later found adrift with two deceased people on board.<\/p>\n
Recounting events since the distress call, Good said that a container ship had picked up the call and alerted the French coastguard, which then contacted Sibly\u2019s family in Australia, who tracked the container ship\u2019s movements all of Thursday and Thursday night.<\/p>\n
She said the cargo ship\u2019s crew was not able to board the yacht, instead trying \u201ceverything\u201d to contact those on board. But \u201cthere was no sign of life on the boat\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
That ship was then joined by a cargo ship and a maxi yacht. Cook said she believed sailors on the maxi yacht were eventually able to board the Acteon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a call from [the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] at about 10am Friday morning, that\u2019s when they told me someone was able to board the yacht and a man and woman had been found deceased,\u201d she told Guardian Australia on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The pair was yet to be formally identified and a family member may have to travel to Africa to identify Sibly\u2019s body, she said.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n As of Monday, Good said the yacht was \u201cstill drifting along in full sail with them on board\u201d. She believed the vessel was being tracked by satellite.<\/p>\n Given the pair were both \u201cvery experienced\u201d sailors, \u201cfor sure something very wrong happened\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n It is understood officials in South Africa and Mauritius are working with local authorities and French officials on the investigation.<\/p>\n She said the investigation and repatriation was \u201chappening so slowly\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would like answers to lots of questions and the next thing is to get her back here,\u201d she said, adding that she had been warned the process would be lengthy and could take \u201cmonths\u201d.<\/p>\n She said her sister had been sailing for 40 years and was \u201chaving the time of her life\u201d, while her companion, whom she met earlier this year when he sailed to Port Lincoln, had sailed around the world for about a decade, much of that time solo.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n During the voyage, Sibly contacted her family every time she was on land and stayed in touch via the travel app, Polarsteps. The pair planned to sail to Durban, then on to Cape Town, from which she would fly home.<\/p>\n \u201cShe last sent me a message on 19 November, because they were about to leave port to keep going south. She said they would be sailing at least for 14 days,\u201d Good said. \u201cShe knew it was dangerous, but she was really adventurous. She loved sailing, it was her whole world.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope it\u2019s all wrong,\u201d she said of the turn of events, \u201cbut I reckon there\u2019s about a 1% chance it\u2019s wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said it was \u201cproviding consular assistance to the family of an Australian missing in the Mozambique channel\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOur thoughts are with the family at this distressing time.<\/p>\n \u201cOwing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian authorities are providing assistance to the family of a South Australian woman who is suspected to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-320565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}