Australian missing on SS Columbia

3:36 AM Thu 11 Mar 2010 GMT

'Mitchell Westlake' .

The British-flagged yacht SS Columbia, which Sail-World reported on last week as missing off the Chilean coastline (See Sail-World story ), is now confirmed to have an Australian trainee sailor on board.

Mitchell Westlake from Queensland's Gold Coast was sailing on a training voyage to round the Galapagos and return, when the yacht was reported missing by Canadian relatives of another of the crew.

Australian newspapers have reported that it is feared that the yacht was lost in the tsunami which engulfed Chile last week. However, this is almost certainly spurious information, as confirmed by many yachts who have experienced other tsunamis. The advice given to all cruising sailors who see that the water is becoming unnaturally shallow while in an anchorage, is 'Go to sea, immediately.'

In the ocean, even only a few hundred metres from the shore, the wave is hardly noticeable. If noticed at all it would only be in the form of a slight raising or lowering of the level of the water. It is when the wave encounters the shallow water close to land that the damaging wave forms.

In the tsunami which hit the Solomons recently, yachts escaped unscathed by simply leaving the wharf and sitting in the middle of the harbour while the several killing waves devastated the shoreline.

Chilean authorities have launched a major search for the yacht SS Columbia which failed to arrive back on the Chilean coast as scheduled on March 6, after changing its ETA from 24th February.

Mitchell's family in Australia are justifiably worried.

'No one's getting any sleep,' said his worried grandfather Ernie Westlake. 'Every time the phone rings you don't know whether to pick it up or not.'Everyone's just hoping.'

The Westlakes have not heard from Mitchell since January 16 when he left Salinas, Ecuador, on the open water sailing course aboard the Columbia.

However, this is not the first time that the same yacht, with the same skipper, has 'gone missing'. In 2002 the SS Columbia waited out a storm in calm Pacific waters en route from Vancouver to Mexico to avoid stormy weather, while a frantic search was conducted.

Sail-World Cruising hopes that this story will have the same ending

by Nancy Knudsen

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Australian missing on SS Columbia

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