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Rescue! Twin brothers Indian Ocean row over this morning
May 16, 2005 15: 16 EST
At the end of April, we introduced twin brothers, Sergey and Alexander Sinelnik, who set out from Carnarvon, Western Australia April 22, on a rarely-attempted expedition: Crossing the Indian Ocean, east to west. The crossing started out good but then trouble mounted.
Broken watermaker
The brothers' sea water desalinator broke shortly after the start of the voyage; and a few days back one of the twin brothers suffered a progressing pain in the joint of his left shoulder (he had broken it one year ago during his around-the-world motorcycle trip on).
Yesterday, May 15, the brothers came to decision to stop their crossing of the Indian Ocean. The situation quickly became critical - in an effort to try to save the twins' boat, the Oceanrowing society and RCC Australia began to seek assistance from passing ships capable of picking up the rowers and their boat.
Mayday
The brother had 70 litres of water on board which would last them for at least the next 10 days. But if no assistance from passing ships was found, the situation would gradually become more serious, and the rescue of the twins would override any wish to save the rowboat.
But early this morning the weather took a turn for the worse, and on May 16, 2005, at 01:15GMT the twins activated their 406 EPIRB.
"Why are they moving away from us?"
That's when "K" Line ship "Cape Island," came up on VHF channel 16 of the ocean rowboat. The ship tried to pick the rowers up, but then, to the brothers despair - it moved away.
"We are too high freeboard to pick them up," the ship reported to ORS. By now, the twins VHF was out and they had no clue what was going on. But the Cape Island had good news, too; "Being as (Norwegian) Euro Viking headed for Fremantle is nearby, it will be easier for them than it is for us to pick the twins up."
At 11:11GMT today, the rescue was over: Euro Viking reported that they retrieved both rowers and their vessel.
According to the Ocean Rowing Society, the last completed Indian Ocean row took place in 2003. Simon Chalk rowed “True Spirit” from Kalbarri, Western Australia, to the longitude of Rafael Island (off the east coast of Madagascar). Chalk’s journey lasted a total of 4027 miles. The Sinelnik brothers planned to travel considerably farther; their route would take them all the way to mainland Africa.
The twin-brothers, who have covered 80,000 km around the world (5 continents) on their motorcycles, were attempting to row the Indian ocean from Australia to Africa (Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania) in their boat "Rus", ancient for 'Russia' (formerly "Linda").
Image courtesy of Ocean Rowing Society and www.33in.ru.
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