On Saturday, October 24, 1998, passengers were boarding the Windjammer Cruises yacht Fantome in Honduras. They were on a six day leisurely cruise to Belize. Captain Guyan March was concerned. Hurricane Mitch was in the Caribbean south of Jamaica, heading westward. It was intensifying rapidly. In fact, the outer rainbands of the growing storm were buffeting the ship.
March made the decision to cut the cruise short, sail to Belize City and put the passengers off the boat so they could return to Miami. After sailing all day, the beautiful sailing ship reached port and the sad passengers headed ashore. Captain March was plotting his next move as he said goodbye.
The official National Hurricane Center forecast projected the storm to continue moving west northwest and eventually make a turn to the north. The central pressure in the powerful storm fell to a dizzingly low 924 millibars. Armed with this information, March headed the four-masted sailboat out to sea to escape the westward moving storm. He sailed southeast toward the protection of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras.
But Mitch seemed to stalk the doomed ship. The steering currents unexpectedly collapsed, turning the storm unexpectedly southward, directly toward the Fantome. By the afternoon of October 27th, March and his crew of thirty-one men were battling fifty-foot waves and 115 mph winds as the hurricane edged closer and closer to them. That afternoon, the satellite phone went dead.
There would be no further contact with the Fantome. Experts theorize that the yacht and its crew of 31 foundered on a huge wave and sunk like a rock late on the 27th or on the 28th of October. All that was ever found of the ship was two life rafts and 8 life vests off Honduras, stenciled “Fantome.”
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