NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2020 Jan 13, 11:27 -0800
To explain my comment about EPIRB in my original post: when I started reading this article, it sounded like a story of a recent event. We learn in one of the first paragraphs that the author, Douglas Robertson was 18 when the vessel sank. I wondered right away why they weren't immediately rescued. Then in paragraph 5, we learn that the author is now 65. Aha. So doing the math the sinking must have happened in 1972 or 1973. So no EPIRB. The family website (which is looking like it's been lost at sea for a few years...) mentions that Douglas's book was launched in 2005.
There's a nice, brief Wikipedia article about the father, Dougal Robertson, and his books that fills in some of the details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dougal_Robertson.
The date of the sinking was June 15, 1972.
Frank Reed
