Microsoft engineer lost at sea?

[henry hey]

Did anyone see this?

henry

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... NR93G1.DTL

[s.v. LaVida]

n/m

[henry hey]

Link didn't work?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... NR93G1.DTL

[Lew Gresham]

I heard he had an EPIRB on board, and a cell phone. I believe the cell phone can be located with a GPS locator. I know my service can find my phone that way, but it has to be done by the police in an emergency situation. I hope he did not decide to go down with his boat. Sometimes people get to the point they have just had enough. Taking off by himself on perfect day, sounds as if that might be just what he did since there have been no sightings, nothing. Usually if a boat goes down, somethings float to the top. But looking for small floating items is almost impossible to see. I certainly hope they find him safe and sound soon. I am sure his family is going nuts!

[M. R. Bober]

CNN reported that he called his wife to tell her that he was going out of cell phone range...

Mitchell Bober

[Matt Cawthorne]

He escaped the rat race.

[henry hey]

Yeah. . . I hope this is not the case.

I was speaking with my friend (and experienced sailor) Peter Schorr. We were both sort of conjecturing that perhaps this guy wanted to:

1) leave his wife and family and head south/elsewhere

2) end it all and turned off his EPIRB/made a convenient hole in his hull

I really hope that neither of these things happened.

Of course another friend who is an experienced blue-water racer had responded that 'anything can happen' when you go off and singlehand. There are certainly many stories of singlehanders who have fared amazingly well in small vessels. We impassioned sailors rally around stories about the guy who circumnavigated on the smallest of vessels. The stock line is something like 'it's the sailer not the boat', but the ocean is a serious thing.

Anyway. considering that there is still no news of his recovery, it would seem that option 1) 2) or 3) -- he went down with the ship has occurred.

Very sad.

henry

[Neil Gordon]

Here's an update on the efforts of the west coast tech community to help in the search:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/techn ... &th&emc=th