Rescue may be too broad a word, but...
Last Thursday it was blowing pretty good on the beach in Nags Head, NC. Waves and surf were were pretty big. I saw a beach cat (at least the main sail looked to be a beach cat, but it was pretty far offshore) out sailing around noon. It was pretty far offshore (onshore breeze) and bouncing around pretty good - not an ideal day for a day sail in the open ocean.
Anyway - they seemed to be making headway ok, they tacked at least once and I thought nothing of it. Around 5 (approximate local time), a beach rescue swimmer enters the water and is picked up by a beach rescue jet ski. They return to the beach with two people in life jackets (plus the rescue swimmer and jet ski driver), presumably from the sailboat. I am assuming the boat broke up, sank and these people swam/drifted toward shore before being picked up by beach rescue. I never saw the boat come ashore - but I didn't explore the whole beach, either.
Anyone in NC hear of this? Was it you? What happened? The sailors seemed to be prepared (life jackets and beach rescue was contacted prior to people on the beach knowing there was a problem).
One hull sank. The owner was looking for someone to get his boat back. They called the Nags Head fire dept. (my wife works there)looking for suggestions. I suggested Sea Tow as the liability of retrieving a 1/2 sunk fully rigged boat from the ocean is quite a task with all the shoaling and sandbars.
Not sure of what they ended up doing, the boat may still be out there.
Thanks. Good thing they had life jackets, I think they had swum in a good bit before being picked up. The water temp wasn't too bad for the Outer Banks, but definitely not FL water temps, either. Pinheaded main (or small, small fathead) that was grey, so probably not dacron. I would guess bigger than a 16 footer, but I wasn't that close.