Scores missing after overloaded yacht sinks

A massively overloaded yacht carrying Haitian illegal immigrants sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands and as many as 85 people are missing, the US Coast Guard said today.

An estimated 200 people were on the boat when it capsized yesterday, said a Coast Guard spokeswoman. One survivor said the boat struck a reef as it tried to escape police.

Rescuers found 113 survivors stranded on two reefs about two miles south-east of West Caicos island.

The boat had been at sea for three days when the crew saw a police vessel and accidentally steered onto a reef as they tried to hide, one survivor said.

The Coast Guard spokeswoman said overloading appeared to be a factor in the accident. “These vessels, they are grossly overloaded. Two hundred people on a sailboat is astronomical,” she said.

Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of reaching the United States, the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos to escape poverty.

In May 2007, an overcrowded sloop carrying more than 160 capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands. Some of the victims were eaten by sharks. The 78 people who survived accused a Turks and Caicos patrol boat of ramming their vessel as they approached shore and towing them into deeper water.