Late in the afternoon of Friday 18 September, the 25.91-metre Azimut 85 motor yacht Gravity was driven onto the rocks at La Salina, on the Pacific coast of Baja California in Mexico. She came ashore near kilometre 74 of the scenic highway between Tijuana and Ensenada, next to the Rivera campground. Three US citizens were aboard, and all three were brought off. By the next evening the surf had broken the yacht apart.
How the rescue went
Ensenada's fire service took the call at 17.14. Its water rescue unit got there first. The Mexican Navy (Semar), urban rescue and paramedics followed, and local fishermen pitched in. Fire chief Julio César Cota Molina said, as reported by El Imparcial, that the yacht was hard to find, because the people aboard did not know the area and could not give their coordinates.
The water rescue unit led two of them off. The third, a man with leg injuries and a disability, according to the fire service, stayed inside the yacht. Surf and heavy swell slowed the teams on the shore, and N+ reported that Semar was considering reaching the yacht from the sea. SuperYacht Times says navy personnel eventually took him off. No one died.
Two other rescues we covered this year lost time before anyone knew where to look. Off Vanuatu, the yacht Lunaris joined a search for the ferry MV Matui that started almost a day late. A charter boat that sank off Vancouver went unreported until a passing boat saw people in the water.
One yacht under two names
The fire service and the Mexican press recorded the boat as Dinasty Malibu, 85 feet long. SuperYacht Times calls her Gravity. A photo of her transom, taken by the social media account @thequalifiedcaptain and published by SYT, reads "GRAVITY / MALIBU, CA", which is her name and home port. Gravity was chartered out of Malibu under the Gravity Malibu brand. Date, place and length match the Mexican reports, and so does the count of three people aboard.
What is known about Gravity?
Gravity is an Azimut 85 flybridge, launched in 1999 and delivered in 2000. Earlier names were Serene and Peter Pan. Her electrics were redone in a 2014 refit, and the interior was updated in 2016. Northrop & Johnson sold her in August 2023 with a last asking price of $955,500 (about €830,000). At the time she was berthed at Marina del Rey in California.
The yacht lasted about a day on the rocks, with heavy waves the whole time. At around 17.16 on Saturday 19 September the superstructure collapsed and the wreckage went under, SuperYacht Times reports, citing eyewitnesses. As of 23 September nothing had been published about removing the wreck or about a fuel leak.
What put her on the rocks
The shore at La Salina is rocky and faces the open Pacific, and that evening the surf was heavy; TV Azteca and N+ both reported that the swell got in the way of the rescue. No official cause of the incident has been given. SYT relays an account from social media: the engines were not working and the yacht was drifting towards the shore. The captain and one passenger jumped onto the rocks, and in SYT's words, "Both people told witnesses on land that they had run out of fuel and didn't have enough to reach their destination." SYT adds that "The cause of the sinking is yet to be verified."
Photo: Bomberos de Ensenada. Source: SuperYacht Times, El Imparcial, N+, Bomberos de Ensenada, Northrop & Johnson.
