Sailboat Fails to Arrive After Captain Reports His Wife Committed Suicide

A sailboat on a transoceanic voyage to San Diego disappeared offshore after its captain reported his wife’s suicideS. Coast Guard officials said Wednesday.

Two Coast Guard planes continued to search Wednesday for the 32-foot sloop Aries, which was 450 miles south-southwest of San Diego during the last radio contact July 16. When the boat failed to arrive in San Diego on Monday as expected, the Coast Guard began an air search that has since covered 87,000 square miles, said Lt. Cmdr. Alan Carver.

The captain, Peter Howcrist, 61, left South Africa some months ago with his wife on a pleasure cruise that was to have included visits with their daughters in Chile, San Diego and Ventura, according to Carver. Howcrist and his wife, who was not identified, carried South African citizenship. Aries is a vessel of British registry.

In early July, the couple ended their visit to the Galapagos Islands and set out for San Diego. But, on July 9, Howcrist radioed Mexican authorities that his wife committed suicide by leaping off the boat, Carver said. In his next and last message, on July 16, which was relayed to the Coast Guard by a Baja California ham radio operator, Howcrist said he was in good spirits and heading to San Diego, according to Carver.

But harbor checks throughout Baja and Southern California earlier this week failed to locate the Aries. A Falcon Jet and a C-130 transport will continue the search for the boat today before a decision is made on whether to suspend operations, Carver said. Two Navy P-3 Orion anti-submarine warplanes also searched for the boat Tuesday.

But the increasing search radius and ocean conditions have reduced the chances of locating the boat to less than 4%, according to Carver. “It’s starting to look like a mighty big piece of ocean out there,” he said. “He may be despondent. He undoubtedly went through a traumatic event.”

Because the reported suicide occurred in international waters, the United States lacks the jurisdiction to investigate it, Carver said. “At this point, it is simply an overdue sailboat. The rest is conjecture.”

All three of the Howcrist’s daughters visited the Coast Guard headquarters in Long Beach on Wednesday. At their request, the Coast Guard refused to identify them.

Carver said Howcrist reported a month’s supply of food, or two months’ worth if it did not include his wife’s rations in that count. His daughters called Howcrist a competent sailor. Sailing conditions off the coast have been favorable in the past month, according to Carver.