One Dead in Yacht Capsizing Near Great Barrier Reef

Over the weekend, a sailor was killed off the coast of Queensland when a racing yacht capsized, acc...

[Brief] Over the weekend, a sailor was killed off the coast of Queensland when a racing yacht capsized, according to Australian police. 

At about 0500 hours on Sunday morning, an EPIRB associated with the yacht activated at a position about four nautical miles off Lady Elliot Island, an ecological resort in the Great Barrier Reef about 45 nm off the mainland. The vessel had lost its keel and capsized. 

Multiple vessels and police assets responded to the scene. RACQ LifeFlight, a helicopter rescue nonprofit based in Queensland, dispatched a rescue aircraft to the scene. The aircrew found that two survivors - a father and son, aged 62 and 27 respectively - had made it safely on top of the upturned yacht's hull. They were winched aboard the helicopter and delivered to a local hospital for evaluation. 

Divers search near the site of the capsizing (Queensland Police)

A third man, aged 65, went missing in the capsizing, and police divers continued the search. His body was located at about 1400 hours local time. 

The Queensland Police did not identify the vessel, but Australian sailing community forums and the boat's previous owner named the yacht as the Sayer 11 racing boat Runaway, a carbon fiber high-performance monohull designed for the 2003 Melbourne-Osaka Race. The vessel reportedly sustained keel damage once before, during the 2007 edition of the same event.

Keel failures are a rare but catastrophic casualty in the yachting world, primarily affecting racing yachts with high performance keel designs. The most notorious example was the loss of the yacht Cheeki Rafiki in 2015: the vessel's bulb keel snapped off, prompting a rapid capsizing that killed all hands on board. 

Runaway (file image courtesy Rolex Sydney-Hobart)