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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, November 23, 2003

Search for pair suspended

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

The search for a California couple whose sailboat sank in stormy seas Thursday was suspended yesterday, the Coast Guard announced last night.

BRIAN AND HELEN MOORE
The children of Brian and Helen Moore, a retired California couple who had sailed the Pacific since May, were notified late yesterday afternoon that the search had been given up as hopeless, said Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley.

"It's got to be very difficult for the family," Mosley said.

"They understood we had done everything we could do," said Lt. Mia Dutcher, one of six Coast Guard search and rescue controllers who coordinated the three-day search.

When contacted last night in Irvine, Calif., Anne Moore, daughter-in-law of the couple, said family members were grieving and were not ready to talk again about the tragedy.

The Moores had been doing exactly what they had planned to do upon retirement, the family had said earlier. Brian Moore, 68, had been an engineer, his wife, 65, a bookkeeper. In mid-May, they had begun a tour of the Pacific aboard their 32-foot sailboat, the Azure. They saw the Marquesas, Tahiti and Bora Bora.

Their children joined them on Kaua'i, and they vacationed with them before setting sail again on Nov. 6 from Nawiliwili Harbor.

Two weeks later, just before dawn on Thursday, the Coast Guard began receiving a signal from the Azure's emergency beacon.

The Coast Guard dispatched a C-130 airplane. What the crew found 950 miles north-northwest of O'ahu, the site the beacon indicated, was the storm that created the waves that reached Hawai'i the following day, swamping roads and smashing homes on the northeast shores.

"There were 30-foot seas and 30-knot (36 mph) winds," Dutcher said. "It was raining, and visibility was low."

The C-130 crew spotted debris. The Azure was gone, but close scrutiny, assisted by high-tech equipment, revealed a life raft with two figures inside. One of the two people moved a little. The other was still.

The air crew dropped a floating radio next to the raft. No one in the raft was well enough to reach for it.

A Coast Guard Cutter, Polar Sea, was diverted from its route from Seattle to Honolulu, but it would take until late Friday to get to the search site. No vessels were anywhere near the area, Dutcher said. The C-130 crew watched the life raft ride the swells, until the aircraft ran low on fuel.

Late Thursday night, the Coast Guard plane returned to Barbers Point, and the Navy launched a P-3C Orion patrol plane. The Navy plane made it to the search site early Friday, four hours after the C-130 departed, Dutcher said. They found the life raft, but could see no one inside.

Late Friday, the other searchers arrived. The Coast Guard cutter Polar Sea was joined by a fishing vessel, the Kimmy 1, and the container ship, the Los Angeles. The seas were gradually receding, but the swells were still up to 12 feet on yesterday. The rescuers retrieved the lifeboat.

"It was full of water," Dutcher said.

The Kimmy 1, lower to sea, helped the Coast Guard retrieve some of the debris: a volleyball, a milk crate and the still-functioning emergency beacon.

The water was 69 degrees and the Moores were thought to be wearing T-shirts and light pants. They carried life jackets aboard, but the children reported they rarely wore them.

"You can get hypothermic rather quickly at that temperature," Dutcher said. "At their age, they probably became hypothermic long ago."

Spotting victims in the water, and not being able to rescue them is a very rare occurrence for the Coast Guard, Dutcher said.

"Early on, when we actually saw people in the raft," she said, "we were, 'Yes! We have them!'

"Then to lose them like this ... It's indescribable."

But there was nothing that could have been done differently, she said. The Moores were experienced mariners, and they had carried all the proper gear and acted appropriately when they ran into trouble.

Even if the C-130 had been able to stay on scene until the P-3C arrived and had seen the raft roll, she said, there would have been nothing the crew could have done. They couldn't get to them.

A helicopter couldn't have made it out that far, she said, but even if it could, it could not have safely hoisted the couple out of seas that rough.

What the Moores needed, she said, was a boat. But there was nothing nearby.

"Call it God or fate or whatever you want, Dutcher said, "but this was out of our control."

At 4:37 p.m., after an exhaustive search of a 4,294-square mile area that went on nearly a day longer than the 17 hours the hypothermia charts predicted the couple could survive, the last of the vessels left the search area.

The Polar Sea is expected to arrive in Honolulu late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Dutcher said.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com