HI HI - 4 Hana, Maui fishermen missing in storm 11 Feb 1979

[cuttlebone]

40 years later, mystery still surrounds the Sarah Joe and its five Hana fishermen who didn’t return

On February 11, 1979, five men from Hana, at the eastern end of the island of Maui, Hawaii - Ralph Malaiakini, 27, Scott Moorman, 27, Benjamin Kalama, 38, Patrick Woessner, 26, and Peter Hanchett, 31- sailed out to fish on the Sarah Joe, a 17-foot motorboat.

Remembering that day, forty years on, Kalama's wife, Ulu Helekahi, said, "It was a perfect, beautiful morning."

"The sea looked like a lake," Robert Malaiakini, Ralph's twin brother, added.

By 1 p.m. the wind increased to a gale. By evening the squall was chaos.

The men were never seen again despite searches by the Coast Guard and the islanders.

Then, in the Marshall Islands, in 1988, 2200 miles from Maui, a researcher spotted an embattled boat with a Hawaii registry on the hull.

It was the Sarah Joe.

Bones were found buried nearby in a simple grave on the atoll, which tests revealed later to be those of Scott Moorman. The grave was covered with stones and a cross made out of driftwood. Nearby was what looked like a blank pad of notepaper interleaved with aluminum foil.​

It's theorized that theorized that Chinese fishers could have found the body but did not tell anyone because they were fishing there illegally. Also:

The notepaper symbolizes good luck in the afterlife for some in China and Taiwan, but the cross is not part of that culture, Michael Woessner, Patrick Woessner's brother, said.​

Even with the boat found and a buried body unearthed, what happened to the crew of the Sarah Joe forty years ago today remains a mystery.

 

[Lato]

The story with more details....really interesting.
The Strange High Seas Mystery of the Sarah Joe | Mysterious Universe

Sorry I meant to advise that you have to scroll past all the ads.....still worth it.

 

[wary]

I wonder if the Chinese fishermen might have paid respect to the dead in their own cultural tradition, (the paper and metal foil), but also thought they should show respect to him in what was, (presumably), his own tradition, (the cross.)

 

[UncoolNegated]

I wonder if the Chinese fishermen might have paid respect to the dead in their own cultural tradition, (the paper and metal foil), but also thought they should show respect to him in what was, (presumably), his own tradition, (the cross.)

Yes. Those are my exact thoughts on.

 

[UncoolNegated]

According to the reporting after the Sarah Joe was found, there was some evidence that the burial was performed by someone who was Japanese. Beer cans nearby were Japanese.