Dog survives 16 days on yacht after solo sailor falls overboard

3:41 AM Tue 30 Mar 2010 GMT

'Juanita after her rescue - she survived 16 days alone on their yacht' .

Juanita was sailing with her master Paul van Rensburg when the yacht they were sailing on disappeared during what was meant to be a two night sail along the New Zealand coastline. Sixteen days later the yacht has been located, without Mr van Rensburg on board, but Juanita safe and sound.

The missing yacht, Tafadzwa, had been located on Sunday by a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion on a training flight, about 110km west of the Chatham Islands.

The story of finding Juanita, a 2-year-old retriever-cross Juanita, was told by Floyd Prendeville, who also took the photos of the dog. 'When we pulled up alongside, she poked her head out for a bit, but went down below again,' he said. Floyd is a fisherman and diver with the fishing boat Legionaire, which towed the Tafadzwa to the Chathams.

But the long time alone at sea had taken a toll on Juanita. When Floyd approached her, she was timid, shaking and silent.

'She was very wary of me, and then I just pulled her in and gave her a couple of comforting pats, and she was shaking, and then she came right. 'Obviously she was looking for someone. I tried to give her a bit of water and she didn't want water, so she wasn't dehydrated in any way.'

Juanita being lifted from Tafadzwa - photo by Floyd Prendeville - .. .

Distraught friends of the missing yachtie say they will do everything within reason to try to find their mate. They were holding out hope he would be found alive, possibly on a pocket of land near the Chatham Islands. Friend Warwick Gowland said a core group of about six searchers would plot a course today to search for Mr van Rensburg.

They were planning to check 'every bit of land area' using boats, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. 'We're going to carry on and do what is within plausible reason so that we can officially say that we've done all we can rather than stop before that point,' Mr Gowland said.

Mr Gowland had earlier criticised the RCCNZ search, saying it was called off too soon.

'They cut it off way too early, it's that simple. It was out there.'

A yacht retrieved - Tafadzwa comes alongside the wharf in the Chatham Islands -

However Maritime New Zealand has rejected criticism that its three-day search - which covered 328,000 square kilometres - was called off prematurely.

Spokeswoman Sophie Hazelhurst said it used a computer program to map tides, wind and currents and predict the location of a drifting object.

'The problem is that the vessel was under sail. It has sailed itself out of the search area.' She added that it was extremely difficult to spot humans floating in the water.

The decision to call the search off was peer-reviewed by senior staff and signed off by Maritime New Zealand director Catherine Taylor.

by Sail-World Cruising/stuff.co.nz