A coronal inquiry has shown that a seaman who contacted his wife and said that “shape-shifting African pirates” were on board his boat before going missing may have been hallucinating due to a gas leak.
The 65-year-old guy, whose name was GFE, had sailed his 35-foot yacht, the Affirmation, alone from Melbourne to Sydney in March 2020.
The expert sailor was believed to have drowned when the boat was subsequently discovered adrift eight nautical miles off the Victorian coast utterly abandoned.
His ship had no visible evidence of damage, but the cabin’s inside was a complete mess.
A Victorian coronial inquiry into the man’s disappearance found that two days before to his disappearance, he had contacted his wife and claimed to have been “hijacked by African pirates” who were able to “shapeshift.”
His wife, alarmed by the strange assertion, phoned the police, who spoke with the sailor and learned that the ‘pirates’ had been aboard since he departed Melbourne, according to The Herald Sun.
Prior to hanging up with the dispatcher, he informed them that he was drifting at sea because an electrical problem had rendered his engine, radio, and GPS inoperable.
The abandoned boat was discovered on March 22 off the coast of Cape Howe, midway between Melbourne and Sydney, after authorities initiated a search and rescue operation.
According to the coroner’s findings on Wednesday, the sailor most likely had hallucinations as a result of a gas leak aboard the yacht.
The ship had an LPG tank, and when search personnel arrived, they discovered the cabin windows were closed and that the gas tubing had been altered.
After further inspection, it was discovered that the plumbing fittings were improper and had been steadily seeping gases into the cabin.
According to Mr. McGregor, it is reasonable to assume that when GFE spoke to (his wife) and police, he was experiencing a hypoxic episode brought on by a combination of sleep deprivation brought on by the rough conditions that prevailed at the time and the slow LPG leak that was seeping into the sleeping quarters.
He discovered that GFE had probably perished after falling overboard when lost of direction.
He said that legislation to stop similar tragedies needs to be created.
He suggested changing Victorian legislation to necessitate the installation of functional gas detectors on vessels with LPG systems.