A sailor more than two weeks overdue in arriving in Hawaii finally did on Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a news release Monday . There was no word on what happened to cause the delay.
The Coast Guard said in an earlier news release that Noel Rubio, 60, departed Long Beach, Calif., on Dec. 28 for a planned three-week sail in his vessel, Malulani. He was heading to Oahu, Hawaii, and was expected to arrive Jan. 18.
But the Coast Guard said Friday that he still hadn’t shown up and it was starting a search for him, adding that Rubio hadn’t been heard from since he left California, when he spoke with a friend via cellphone.
Rubio’s boat is a 32-foot Westsail sloop whose marine band radio was the only means of communication aboard the ship, the Coast Guard said.
Douglas Samp, a search and rescue mission coordinator from the Coast Guard’s Alameda Rescue Coordination Center, said in the earlier news release that anyone attempting an open-ocean crossing should have multiple forms of communication at hand.