The family ran aground on a nearly invisible reef 1,500 miles from New Zealand.
At 2:30 a.m., a sailboat called the Dona Catharina picked up a distress call from the middle of the South Pacific. It was from a couple and their two children, who had run the Avanti, their 50-foot catamaran, into a coral reef hundreds of miles from the nearest real landmass. The family likely would have been stranded for days had it not been for an incredible stroke of luck–the Dona Catharina was the only other vessel anywhere near the area.
The family, who is British, was attempting to sail their 50-foot catamaran near Beveridge Reef, which lies nearly 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand when they ran aground. Since only a small part of the reef is visible at low tide, it has been the site of several wrecks over the years.
The skipper of the Dona Catharina, a ketch that was in the area doing whale research, answered the distress call in under 10 minutes but wasn’t able to rescue them until dawn broke. Geoff Lunt of the Rescue Coordination Centre of New Zealand said the family was incredibly lucky. “The skipper … answered the emergency radio call from our Maritime Operations Centre within seven minutes,” he explained. “It was very fortunate they were anchored in the lagoon and listening to the distress channel at 2:30 a.m.”
At around 6:30 a.m., the crew was able to send out a dingy to pick the family up. The catamaran, however, is a lost cause, and is currently hung up on the reef and will most likely be broken apart by the elements.
The dingy brought the family back to the Dona Catharina, which was anchored in a safe area nearby. The family is “comfortable onboard the ketch, within the safety of the lagoon,” said Lunt.
The group is set to sail to Niue, a tiny island nation 250 miles away, in a few days.
