French authorities have called off the search for three Danish yachtsmen believed to have been on board a trimaran – a tri-hulled sailboat – that was found drifting without its crew in the Bay of Biscay 70 miles west of the French port city of Brest on Saturday.
French authorities cancelled the air and sea search they started on Saturday and requested that vessels in the area keep an eye out for the missing sailors.
“A fishing boat spotted the vessel,” Ingrid Parrot from the French Coast Guard told BT tabloid. “It was tipped and adrift with no crew aboard. We sent a helicopter, but there were no people in the water.”
Admiral Fleet Denmark contacted Funen police on Saturday evening after French authorities had searched the drifting vessel.
“They informed us that they had found papers belonging to two Danes, aged 55 and 34, who live on Funen,” Funen police commissioner Niels Eric Nymark told BT. “We have contacted the families who told us that the missing Danes are not on Funen.”
Nymark said that police had been contacted on Monday by the family of a third man who was due to have arrived in Billund on September 30. The 33-year-old man’s family said he had been sailing in France.
In related news, a Danish man has also died during a diving holiday in the Egyptian town of Hurghada.
The middle-aged man drowned during a dive in the Red Sea on September 25, according to the Foreign Ministry. His family has been notified.
