Hopes fade of missing yachties being found alive

Rescue authorities have all but given up hope of finding alive two yachties who left Nelson early in June and disappeared.

Nelson woman, Verona Hunt and her Australian partner Gary Cull sailed out of Nelson on June 8 on the 12.6 metre trimaran Manoah.

They were headed for Rarotonga and had food for several weeks.

They were heard from once -- the day after they sailed -- and rescue authorities said today there was little if any hope they were still alive.

"The reality is that as every day goes by there is less and less hope," Lindsay Sturt from the Rescue Co ordination Centre said.

"It is most unlikely they will turn up, but we are forever hopeful."

Ms Hunt was due to start a new job in Nelson on July 25.

Mr Sturt said the situation would be reviewed at the end of the month but without a signal from the yacht's emergency beacon, or any sign of it, there was little they could do.

An air force Orion searched hundreds of thousands of square nautical miles of ocean without finding any sign of the missing yacht.

Regular maritime broadcasts were made for vessels to keep a good lookout.

In 1989 the Rose Noelle, also a trimaran, drifted upside down up the east coast of New Zealand for 119 days before washing up on Great Barrier Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf. The four crew all survived.

"The Rose Noelle was one situation where people had given up hope and said this was never going to happen, these people are long gone," Mr Sturt said.

"But lo and behold these people turned up on Great Barrier Island. It was just incredible."

However, it was an extremely remote chance the couple on the Manoah had survived.

- NZPA