Family of Five Rescued
August 12, 2013 – Chile
The Gastonguay family were reportedly frustrated with the U.S. government, so Sean, 30, and Hannah, 26, decided to move their family to the remote island nation of Kiribati by sailing there. They never made it.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday after their arrival in Chile, Hannah says the family traveled from Arizona to San Diego in November to move aboard a sailboat — on which she gave birth — and set sail in May. Details are sketchy, but Hannah reported that the family — including their 3-year-old and now-8-month-old daughters, and Sean's father Mike — suffered "gale after gale" during the first couple of weeks and somehow damaged the boat. They claim to have drifted for 91 days without propulsion because they were afraid that setting the genoa would dismast the boat. They were finally rescued by a Venezuelan fishing vessel and transferred to a Japanese cargo ship, which delivered them to San Antonio, Chile.
Sean Gastonguay guides his wife, Hannah, and two
young daughters down a gangplank to the first dry land they'd seen in
three months.
© 2013 AP
None of the family were injured during the ordeal, and there's no word on if the boat was scuttled or is still afloat. Indeed, in news reports there's not even mention of exactly where the rescue occurred. Flights home for the family — who were fed up with paying taxes for services they didn't approve of — were arranged by the U.S. Embassy.
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A wag of the tail to latitude38.com
To paraphrase an old saying, "if there were such a thing as a perfect place, it would no longer be perfect when you arrived." The USA isn't perfect, but it's still the greatest!
-fl