patti labelle blog: 'Ghost Ship' Found Off the Coast of Australia

Possibably you have heard of the mystery of Mary Celeste. Yes, it was an abandoned "ghost ship" found off the coast of Portugal in 1872. None of the Mary Celeste's crew or passengers were ever found. Now the almost same scene happened in Australia. From the Australian

Food and cutlery sit on the table undisturbed.
A newspaper lies open nearby and a laptop computer is switched on. Wallets and mobile phones belonging to the vessel's crew are still lying on the table, while their beds have recently been slept in.

The boat's motor is running and its safety equipment, including life vests and an emergency EPIRB beacon, is stowed on board, while an inflatable dinghy is securely tethered to the stern.

Everything appeared to be normal on board the luxury catamaran Kaz II on Wednesday when Corrie Benson, from Emergency Management Queensland, was winched from a helicopter on to the abandoned vessel, drifting in the outer Great Barrier Reef, 160km off the coast of Townsville.

The only sign of something amiss was a torn sail.
But to all intents and purposes, the three Perth mates [Derek Batten, 56; Peter Tunstead, 69; James Tunstead, 63] who set out on the six-week trip of a lifetime on Sunday to sail north from idyllic Airlie Beach, in north Queensland, to their homes in Western Australia had vanished into thin air.