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SECTION 3
"FISH FIJY"
The photos of the yacht Fish Fiji show a beautiful two-master, a classical ketch 22.07 metres in length, built in 1952 by Camper & Nicholson - the famous English Boat Builder. The ship was wooden and was visibly in a more than usually good and well-kept condition if one considered its age.
On 5th march 1988 at 06:00 pm the crew of the yacht FISH FIJY was busy in preparing their emergency departure of the yacht, which was slowly sinking - A man, his wife and his son. They were 150 miles of the coast of Victoria, were the seabed reached 1000 meter underneath the keel. They launched the brand new Novo marine Tender with powerful outboard motors and threw their personal belongings in the boat, which was moored alongside. The wife went downstairs to pack her cosmetic back and her expensive cloth in watertight containers. She got wet feet, as the inrush of water from the open sea valves, that her husband had skillfully opened 10 Minutes before was reaching the floor boards of the cabin. Her husband waited, until everything was stored in the tender before he tuned the radio to the marine VHF emergency channel 16400 MHZ and set off a Mayday call: three times as the procedure required and using the maritime phonetic alphabet:
„Mayday, Mayday, Mayday - :+++Yacht Fish Fiji +++ 65 ft. Ketch +++ call Sign ZDGW19 +++ we are taking water rapidly and are sinking +++Position 39’ 42’’ S 147’ 36’’ O +++ abandon ship and take to life raft +++ over +++
The radio that he used was of an older type, which did not automatically transmit the GPS co-ordinates. The position he gave, was 100 miles to the East. He did not wait for a response but jumped in the Tender and they left the place in a rush. The Tender took off at high speed and when the bow started bashing the waves, he laughed heartedly and grabbed a security line. The word “fraud” was not in his vocabulary, for him it was all a game, a game of the fox being the beast of prey and it was for a reason that they called him “Foxy Fred” - not only for his sexual prowess. He came out usually as the winner. He opened a bottle of his favorite Whiskey - Tullamore Dew - and the bottle made the round. A helicopter was sent straight away on receipt of the distress call, but forty minutes after the accident no trace of the yacht or a floating life raft was found. The search was interrupted at the onset of darkness.
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