Allegedly professional SAR personnel with allegedly competent organizations like the USCG and USN have often been asked to look for a boat at sea. Sometimes they find it, sometimes they don't, and that can be despite a hundred hours of C-130's and helos running rigid grid patterns, based on detailed drift
charts.
Even then, sometimes a boat turns up two years later, having eluded every eyeball in the Atlantic and beaching itself intact. Or, sometimes capsized. But having eluded all sight for years.
So realistically? The OP does not stand a very high percent of success by just going out there, by plane, boat, or even magic carpet, and looking around for where the boat might be. Sorry, but that's how the numbers roll.
Yes, there's reason to be paranoid about strangers investing their lives rushing out to beat him to it and claim
salvage rights if he puts out information. But if that information isn't put out? What, people are just going to check out every aimless sailboat they see? One that is possibly still under sail yet?!
I'm no SAR expert but even Huck Finn had some ideas how to find a
lost marble. And time WAS of the essence. I say WAS because with every day that was
lost, the search area expanded geometrically and quickly became large enough to probably be hopeless by now.
Not to mention, if we are left to guess at the details, the boat was abandoned some ten days ago. It might have had 200 gallons of
diesel with the
engine running at idle consuming 1/2 gallon per hour, so, perhaps 400 hours of unattended
engine idle. Or perhaps way less...rashly assuming the engine was so well-behaved that it could and would idle for that many days. And we can only guess at how long the hatteries, if they weren't flooded out, continued to supply
power to the
AIS.
Ten days? Can't reliably
forecast wx for that long, now add another five? to go out and look for the boat? Wx in midwinter eventually will be a problem. Going out SOLO and intending to be abandoned out there on a disabled boat in more days of unknown wx, and then assuming whoever takes you out is, well, rational about returning SOLO as well?
Sorry, OP, but I think you have been stacking the cards against yourself. This is one where TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE and you would have been better off risking a
salvage claim, than risking the ever-widening search area, the continuous increase of poor wx doing further damage, and the dangers of going out to a vessel in unknown condition SOLO again.
Just one man's opinion, but I think you are putting concerns about the perils of a salvage claim at the top of your list--and ignoring the questions of how quickly you need to act, if you stand ANY chance of recovering it before it is either wrecked or found by a salvor in any case.
Anyone "local" who might see an AIS contact that appears to just be "drifting aimlessly" for a couple of days, might just go check it out and lay salvage claim anyhow. You're not accomplishing anything this way. Think about that. Ask some SAR pros about how less likely it is that you'll ever find the boat, as every added day passes.
Re: Urgent help needed to recover abandoned yacht NW Barbados
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