A boat owned by Auclander MaxCamis, which was abandoned in a storm off Samoa five years ago, now turned up in cyclone-hit Tikopia, Solomon Islands.
According to McCamish, the boat overturned in a storm early in 1998 and its five-member crew were rescued almost 24 hours later.
The 10-meter twin-hulled aluminium vessel, the Streyka, was hurled about 200 metres inland by 10-metre waves driven by winds of up to 350km/h. It was found on sand above buried homes, he said. It was high and dry on Tikopia but looking relatively intact despite Cyclone Zoe.
It still carried its original green and white paintwork and the name of the Samoan boatyard, which built it for a fishing business McCamish established with a friend in Apia, Lawrie Burich.
But conditions were too wild to tow the boat ashore and it was given up as lost despite strenuous aerial attempts to find it in calmer weather.
He could only assume the uninsured vessel, which cost him about NZ$100,000 to buy and fit out, was found, salvaged and patched up by someone. The vessel's then skipper, former Christchurch man Brian Hood said: "That's amazing - when we were picked up she was just about out of flotation. We managed to keep one hull above water but the other one was submerged."
Hood recalled being repeatedly washed off the overturned vessel by waves and being dragged back by his four young Samoan crewmembers as sharks circled them.
Hood said that sharks were attracted by their catch of albacore tuna, so one brave crewmember dived down to release the fish from the holds. "The fish-holds were open and they were in there packed with ice but every so often one would drop out and a big white shape would come along and grab it," he said.
McCamish said he was resigned to probably having forfeited his ownership rights to the vessel under international salvage laws.
A Marine Safety Authority spokeswoman indicated that the first person to board a boat abandoned by its owner in international waters was entitled to keep it.
Mackley, who was resting in Vanuatu after four flights to Tikopia indicated that the Streyka appeared to be the only modern vessel on an island of dug-out canoes.