Kaz II
When rescuers boarded the 9.8-metre catamaran Kaz II off the Great Barrier Reef in April 2007, Derek Batten and brothers Peter and James Tunstead were gone, but the engine was running, food and cutlery were laid out, a laptop was open and powered on, the radio and GPS still worked, and the life jackets remained aboard; Queensland’s coroner later favoured an accidental man-overboard chain of events after the yacht left Airlie Beach, yet the scene still reads like a frozen moment at sea, three men missing from a vessel that looked as if they had only just stepped away.
On the morning of 15 April 2007, the sailing catamaran Kaz II left Abel Point Marina at Airlie Beach in north Queensland. On board were owner and skipper Derek Charles Batten, known as Des, his close friend and neighbour Peter John Tunstead, and Peter's brother James Alfred Tunstead. Their intended voyage was ambitious but not secretive: a coastal passage north toward Townsville as the first leg of a longer trip around northern Australia and back toward Western Australia. The men had provisioned the boat, plotted routes, discussed stops, and spoken with family. By the end of the week, Kaz II would be known in headlines as a modern Australian ghost yacht.
The case became famous because the recovered vessel seemed, at first glance, to preserve ordinary life in the instant after its crew had vanished. When rescue personnel boarded the catamaran, they found the engine idling in neutral, a newspaper dated 15 April 2007, berths that appeared to have been slept in, a coffee cup still upright, fishing gear, computers and navigation equipment, food and personal effects. No distress call had been received from the crew. Life jackets were not missing. The vessel showed damage to its sails after drifting among reef systems, but investigators found no convincing evidence of a violent struggle, robbery, or third-party boarding.
The official record is more detailed and less theatrical than the legend. The men had not simply disappeared from a perfectly still boat. The last confirmed moving-image record, recovered from a camera found aboard, was filmed at about 10:05 local time on 15 April. It showed the vessel sailing near George Point in choppy conditions, with a squall visible ahead, fenders still hanging from both sides, safety wires open at the stern, Peter Tunstead fishing near the port aft stairway, and no one wearing a life jacket. Later reconstruction placed the men near a hazardous combination of circumstances: an underway catamaran, fishing gear at the stern, open access to the sugar scoop platforms, sails set before the wind, and a vessel that would quickly move beyond reach of anyone who entered the water.
Queensland State Coroner Michael Barnes delivered formal findings on 8 August 2008 after an inquest into the suspected deaths of the three men. He found that Derek Batten, James Tunstead, and Peter Tunstead were dead and that they died in the sea off George Point on 15 April 2007. The coroner could not be definitive about the precise sequence, but he considered the most likely scenario to be a cascading accident: one of the Tunstead brothers may have fallen overboard while trying to retrieve a fishing lure found wrapped around the port rudder, the other may have entered the water to assist, and Batten may have started the engine and tried to control the boat before being knocked overboard by an uncontrolled boom or otherwise losing the vessel. Once all three were in the water without life jackets, the catamaran would have moved beyond them within seconds. Drowning was found more likely than shark attack, although the latter could not be completely excluded.
That official explanation is persuasive but not fully closed. No bodies were recovered, and no witness saw the men enter the water. Their families questioned aspects of the search and forensic examination, and public discussion has continued around the fenders, the condition of the vessel, the timing of sightings, and the possibility of another boat or foul play. The inquest rejected those theories as unsupported by the weight of evidence, but the absence of bodies and the strange preserved details aboard Kaz II left a residue of uncertainty. The case remains unresolved in the public sense because the final moments were never directly observed, yet it is officially documented as a fatal maritime misadventure rather than a confirmed crime or paranormal mystery.
The most important event date in the official findings is 2007-04-15, when the vessel departed Abel Point Marina and when the coroner found the men likely died off George Point. The inquest findings were delivered on 2008-08-08.