On September 18th, a message was posted to Social Media.



"My brother Alexander Francis Shaw is missing in the Ionian Sea between Italy and Greece.  Neither Greek nor Italian coastguards have been able to locate his yacht, which is a British flagged Westerly GK29 called "Granny Knot", though they are still trying.  The UK coastguard is also involved, as is the Foreign Office.  He left Reggio Calabria in southern Italy on 9th September heading for Athens via Corinth. The 9th September is also the last date that his phone was online. He was due to meet someone in Greece on September 11th but never showed up, so has technically been missing for one week now.  The area is currently unsearchable because there is a storm going on.  I'm writing this in the hope that someone has heard from him on or after the 9th or even better if anybody had his phone on find friends or similar they might be able to furnish us with a more recent final known location.  Other points:

- As far as I know Alexander (image attached) was the only person on board 

- Granny Knot (pictured in Stromboli the week before) has a GPS onboard that was used intermittently. We do not have and do not know how to obtain its MMSI or callsign 

- Boat is not visible on marinetraffic.com and similar tracking sites

- The Corinth port authority http://aedik.gr/?lang=en have no record of this yacht passing through the Corinth canal

- A Royal Navy Captain & Defence Attache' has reported the disappearance to the Hellenic Search and Rescue Centre and to the Italian Centre in Rome and requested their assistance"



This is the story of Alexander Francis Shaw.