Miss­ing yacht Kob­ben back in Nor­way

Good news, for a chan­ge! The litt­le motor sai­ling Kob­ben is back in Nor­way, the man on board is in good con­di­ti­on, con­side­ring all cir­cum­s­tances.

Kob­ben had left main­land Nor­way on 13 Sep­tem­ber with cour­se for Lon­gye­ar­by­en but never arri­ved. A major search and res­cue ope­ra­ti­on was star­ted with major resour­ces, inclu­ding seve­ral heli­c­op­ters, fixed-win­ged air­craft and ships, but the search did not yield any result. Due to a lack of any infor­ma­ti­on about the boats whe­re­a­bouts, the who­le sea area bet­ween north Nor­way and Spits­ber­gen had to be sear­ched. The ope­ra­ti­on was aban­do­ned after seve­ral days, and the worst was feared due to stor­my wea­ther in the rele­vant peri­od.

The yacht Kob­ben is back in Nor­way (pho­to: Nor­we­gi­an SAR aut­ho­ri­ty).

On Fri­day (27th Sep­tem­ber), Kob­ben was final­ly clo­se enough to land, the islands of Ves­terå­len in north Nor­way, for the man on board to cont­act his fami­ly by mobi­le pho­ne who could then inform the SAR aut­ho­ri­ty. The boat had engi­ne trou­bles and was towed into the port of Ande­nes, as NRK reports. One can only suspect that com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on equip­ment on board was insuf­fi­ci­ent or mal­func­tio­ning or both. But that’s details, ques­ti­ons others may ask when the time is up for it – most important­ly, the man is back home and well. He is said to have done the crossing bet­ween Nor­way and Spits­ber­gen more than 40 times.

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