SV Cynthia Woods
The SV Cynthia Woods was a sailing vessel owned by Texas A&M University at Galveston (TAMUG) and used by The TAMUG Sailing Team. It was manufactured in 2005 and donated to TAMUG by George P. Mitchell. The Cynthia Woods was named for his wife Cynthia Woods Mitchell.
2008 vessel capsize in Gulf of Mexico
On June 6, 2008, the Cynthia Woods set sail in the Regatta de Amigos with a 6-person crew consisting of the captain, along with four sailing team members, and one safety officer who was a volunteer. The sailing yacht commenced the sailboat race in Galveston, Texas at 2:00p.m. local time. The Cape Fear 38 was destined for a salt water sailing cruise along the Gulf of Mexico coast to Veracruz, Mexico with the Regatta Amigos occurring at the Isla Mujeres island.The Cape Fear monohull is believed to have lost its bulb keel jeopardized by a fluctuating sea state in the night. The Northern Hemisphere subtropical zone was mercurial with severe weather during the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. The Gulf of Mexico tropical storm interval encompassed Tropical Storm Alma and Tropical Storm Arthur by late May and early June 2008. The tropical cyclogenesis developed along the east and west coasts of Central America while combining the Yucatán Channel of the Caribbean Sea.
The Cape Fear 38 was equipped with two search and rescue transponders: a main one attached to the boat and a portable one provided by race officials for monitoring. The main transponder stopped working around midnight on June 6 and the portable stopped working around 9:00a.m. the next morning. The crew missed their scheduled 8:00a.m. check-in call on June 7.
Safety officer Roger Stone woke the crew in the lower deckhouse alerting the squad of the boat consuming seawater before Mr. Stone became displaced in the marginal sea. A sailboat matching the description of the missing Cape Fear monohull was spotted in a capsized state by a Coast Guard aircraft at 5:15p.m. on June 8, 2008. The navigational crew orderly escaped the turtling sloop while staying afloat using four personal flotation devices in four-to-six-foot seas for 26 hours before being found by the United States Coast Guard air-sea rescue and subsequently culled from the Gulf of Mexico waters. The survivors were lifted to safety by helicopter at around 1:00a.m. on June 8 and flown to a hospital in Galveston for treatment.