Cheeki Rafiki: Hunt joins calls for yachtsmen search

Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt, the MP for one of the missing men, said that the US coastguard gave up too soon.

13:43 20 May 2014

Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt joins calls for the US coast guard to resume the search for the four missing sailors. Mr Hunt tweeted: "Desperate 4 families of missing yachtsmen, one from Farnham. I know US Coastguard has done masses but pls don't stop looking. 2 soon 2 give up." 

 

The US Coastguard has called off the search early on Sunday morning due to treacherous weather conditions. Contact with the 40ft Cheeki Rafiki was lost on Friday after it got into difficulties 620 miles east of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. 

 

Relatives said that there are suggestions that the four sailors, Paul Goslin, 56, from West Camel, Somerset; Andrew Bridge, 22, from Farnham, Surrey; Steve Warren, 52, also from Somerset, and 23-year-old James Male, from Southampton, could still be alive. They reasoned that beacon signals by the crew indicated they managed to evacuate the yacht to a life raft. 

 

Mr Goslin's wife, Cressida, said: "We just feel that they're not being given a chance.

 

"If we don't try to rescue them we're just going to leave them to starve to death."