Lost, feared drowned

The BBC has an article about a missing yacht and its sailors:

The search for four British sailors missing in the Atlantic has resumed after it was called off on Sunday. The Coast Guard had agreed to continue searching after a request from the UK government. Cheeki Rafiki, the forty-foot racing yacht, was sailing from a regatta in Antigua back to the UK when it got into difficulties. Contact with the men was lost on Friday.
Members of the sailors' families said they were "over the moon" at the news. They met with Foreign Office Minister Hugh Robertson before leaving to go to the US Embassy to meet the homeland attaché.
A spokeswoman for the Coast Guard said the "planning process" for the renewed rescue effort began just after 7:30 local time. "It'll be coordinated by air and sea as before, but the details are still being worked out," she told BBC News. She said she could not, at this stage, say why the search had resumed. The Coast Guard had previously said it would only start searching again if new information came to light.
But Robertson said that the Foreign Office had been "impressing on them the need to continue the search" since the weekend. "They're human beings and they absolutely understand what is going through the minds of the families and the relatives of all those affected," the minister said.
Laura Carpenter, whose father, Steve Warren, is one of the missing sailors, said she had been told that a plane was in the air and on the way to the area and would take about three to four hours to get there.
Speaking outside the Foreign Office after what he described as a "very positive meeting", Graham Male, father of missing James, thanked the UK, Canadian, and US authorities and urged people to continue signing an online petition which has attracted more than 200,000 signatures. "Let's bring our loved ones home," he told waiting reporters.
The Cheeki Rafiki was taking part in Antigua Sailing Week. The yacht began taking on water some six hundred miles east of Cape Cod in Massachusetts and diverted to the Azores.
The four missing crew members are Paul Goslin, 56, from West Camel, Somerset; Andrew Bridge, 22, from Farnham, Surrey, the yacht's skipper; Steve Warren, 52, also from Somerset, and 23-year-old James Male, from Southampton.
Warren's son-in-law, Dan Carpenter, said: "We are holding out hope. We are aware that it is still a long shot but while there is some hope, we are concentrating on that."
Earlier, the UK government said it had been assured the US rescuers "did everything they could". The Americans had said the estimated survival time past the time of distress was approximately twenty hours, and that their crews had searched for 53 hours.
But the decision to resume searching came after family members insisted they could still be alive in the yacht's twelve-man life raft. A raft, such as the one on board the Cheeki Rafiki, is required to meet the international standard ISO 9650, which stipulates how the craft must be constructed and what it must have on board. The rafts are highly visible and buoyant and can be boarded quickly in an emergency.
Skipper Bridge's grandmother Valerie said: "We are delighted. It is at least something and that is all we were asking for, all we wanted was another search. It might not come to anything, but people want them to do it and they are trying. It seemed too quick, just two days and we were saying 'if only they could do it for a bit longer'. You never know what could happen."
The men's families met Foreign Office Minister Hugh Robertson in London while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, local MP to one of the sailors, tweeted his appeal to the Coast Guard to keep searching. Goslin's daughter, Claire, who had made an emotional plea to the Americans, said she was "over the moon. I just hope and pray with all my heart that now they find them."
Tracy Edwards, who skippered the first all-women crew around the world, said the men had been failed by the Coast Guard. "I'm absolutely delighted they've resumed the search, appalled that it's taken the British public to force the prime minister to do something," she told BBC News. "These men are experienced, fit, healthy and they've got modern equipment. How sad they they should've done all the right things, and then we failed them. The Coast Guard and the UK Coastguard have decided they haven't survived, and I think that's appalling."
The search took place over more than four thousand square miles in mid-Atlantic. The Coast Guard said locator beacons activated by the crew indicated they were in a position a thousand miles east of Massachusetts on Friday morning.
The yacht was facing fifteen-foot waves, fifty mph winds, and sea and air temperatures of sixty degrees, the Coast Guard added. A spokesman said over the weekend it had "saturated the area" in a two-day search involving three US and Canadian aircraft and three merchant vessels, and "we would have found them" if it had been possible.
On Saturday, a cargo vessel which was helping with the search spotted and photographed an overturned hull (photo) which matched the description of the Cheeki Rafiki.
Nicola Evans, a friend of Cheeki Rafiki's skipper, Bridge, said: "When we started this campaign, we didn't know who would listen, just that our boys were lost at sea and we refused to let go of hope." But his sister, Kay Coombes, said: "It's a shame that it has taken this long for them to change their mind and go back out there. I feel that we may have wasted a couple of days."
Sir Ben Ainslie, the four-time Olympic yachting champion, said: "If there is a chance they are still out there, then we need to keep looking for them."
And Sir Richard Branson, who also backed the online petition, urged any vessels in the area to aid the mission. "I would urge any local ships or merchant ships crossing the Atlantic, and boats returning from the Caribbean to Europe, to divert through the area and join the search party. As well as the need to conduct a private search on water, I believe that the Coast Guard now needs to fly to the capsized hull to determine whether or not the raft is still there."

Rico says people should have to post a bond before they start stupid shit like this....