In spite of fading hopes for the seven crew members of the vintage yacht Nina, missing in the Tasman Sea since June 04 and thought to have sunk, the family of one of the crew, British man Matthew Wootton, still hopes he will be found alive. As reported by Sail-World.com

Published 11 years ago, updated 5 years ago

See Update to this story 5 July here.

Wootton, from Lancaster, was on board the Nina, a famous 85-year-old schooner sailing from the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, to Newcastle on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

The yacht has not been heard from for three weeks, and New Zealand search and rescue services are scouring the area for any sign of the missing schooner or its crew.

Wootton, a Green party activist, had been travelling for about three and a half years – mostly in the Americas – and Australia was to be his last stop before heading home, his family said.

Wootton’s mother Susan told the Daily Mail the family hoped the search for her son would continue, and criticised the Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ), which is running the search effort with help from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

‘We are on the internet every minute of the day trying to find some news,’ she said.

‘We just want the New Zealand coastguard to keep on looking for the boat. They’ve only searched one-third of the area they should be searching.’

Yesterday’s (Monday’s) search, building on the 500,000 square nautical miles already covered, concentrated on looking for a liferaft in an area of the extreme northern tip of New Zealand. The search was due to be called off for the day at 6 pm local time (7 am BST), RCCNZ told Guardian Australia.

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