The Coast Guard Italian has rescued a Spanish navigator who had been adrift for eight days aboard a 12-meter sailboat. This sailor who had begun a solo voyage from the island of Crete to Sicily, in Italy, on April 11.
After days without knowing anything about his whereabouts, the Spanish achieved this Friday “send light signals to be identified, but was reached, in the middle of the night, by the patrol boat CP311 from Roccella Jonica. who brought him on board, finally saving him.”
After receiving information from the rescue center in Piraeus (Greece) and a satellite signal indicating the possible presence of the vessel 110 miles from Cape Spartivento, about 200 kilometers from the coast of Calabria, in southern Italy, it was launched the Coast Guard rescue protocol coordinated by the Maritime Directorate of Reggio Calabria, it was reported in a note.
It was a complex operation for which a small plane was deployed from Catania, in Sicily, a patrol boat from Roccella Jonica, in Calabria, and two merchant ships were also diverted to the area in search of the sailboat.
With very bad weather conditions40 knots of wind and sea 5 getting worse, the sailboat Black Bit was eventually sighted by Coast Guard aircraft, according to a statement.
The Spanish sailor was placed under observation by the health workers who were waiting for him at the port of Roccella, in Calabria, where he arrived this Saturday morning.
