Amver Ship Saves Elderly Sailor Off Hawaii

 

The Amver participating ship Horizon Reliance rescued an 81 year old male from his sailboat four months after the ship rescued three Canadians in another daring Pacific rescue.

The situation began as a possible medical evacuation from a sailboat 1,100 miles east north east of Ohau and resulted in personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard Fourteenth District using an Amver surface picture to identify and divert the U.S. flagged container ship to rescue the sick sailor.

Amver, sponsored by the United States Coast Guard, is a unique, computer-based, and voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities to arrange for assistance to persons in distress at sea.

Once Captain Costanzi, master of the Horizon Reliance, had the elderly sailor in the ship’s hospital, his crew provided medical treatment and kept the sailor comfortable. The Horizon Reliance is sailing to Honolulu and is expected to arrive on June 13th.

This was the second rescue in just over four months for the container ship. On February 8th, 2012 the Horizon Reliance diverted and rescued three Canadians after their sailboat sank 280 miles northeast of Hilo, Hawaii.

The Horizon Reliance, managed by Horizon Lines of Charlotte, NC, enrolled in Amver in 1990 and has earned participation awards for 21 years.

With Amver, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and divert the best-suited ship or ships to respond. Vessels send periodic position reports to the Amver center until arriving at their port of call. This data is able to project the position of each ship at any point during its voyage. In an emergency, any rescue coordination center can request this data to determine the relative position of Amver ships near the distress location. On any day there are over 5,000 ships available to carry out search and rescue services. Visit https://www.amver.com to learn more about this unique worldwide search and rescue system.

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Source: Amver, June 14, 2012;