Search & Rescue for Travis Gates

This fund is set up for Travis’s mother Cheryl
LaRose.  She will be using it for past, present
and future search & rescue expenses which are around $15,000 at this point.  Cheryl is the only
person with access to the money raised. This is a  FB post which was done by Travis’ close
friend Steve

It is with a hopeful yet worrisome heart that I make this post. Below are the details as we know them at this point regarding my brother and one of my best friends, Travis Gates, who has been missing at sea since last Monday night off the coast of Belize and Guatemala. PM or call me for more details.

The following is from Rachel and Cliff who
own the Catamaran Charter company Travis
has been working for for about 2 years. Travis, you are in our hearts and minds and we pray
that you will pop up with one of your amazing and incredible stories.

"My husband Cliff and I run the sailing charter company where Travis worked, he was our
brother too. This is the update:
On Tuesday early afternoon we were
informed by the Guatemalan customs broker
in Livingston that Travis' sailboat 'Avenir' was
found "on anchor" on the north tip of
Cabo Tres Puntas, Guatemala, with nobody on board. The dinghy which we loaned to him for safety reasons was not there, so we assumed
he had some engine issues and had taken it to go for help for something, so we were on
standby.
Several hours later photos were shared
showing the boat was actually aground with
the mainsail up and the engine running, which led us to believe he had fallen overboard and
our hopes were that he was in the dinghy. Cliff immediately mobilised with Astrum helicopters and covered a broad area late afternoon
Tuesday. The conditions were dead calm with perfect visibility. We sent one of our cats
down south with 2 captains to be on standby. On Wednesday Cliff took another helicopter
flight at first light. By 9am we were able to
receive the data from Travis' chart plotter
from Guatemalan officials so we were able to determine his last waypoints before the boat looked to erratically change course, which looks to be around 10pm Monday. This gave us a
more defined search area around the snake cayes and port honduras marine reserve. We
had 4 fast boats out on searches, including the Guatemalan and Honduran coastlines, the
coast of Belize and every island in the area
where it looked like he fell overboard. Cliff then chartered a private tropic air plane and covered the entire southern area including sapodilla cayes, sarstoon and all of the cayes. Our
hopes were if he's in the dinghy he could make it, as it had been raining so he could have
collected rain water and wasn't sunny. We
scoured every island, Guatemalan, Honduran and Belize coastline, sapodillas, everywhere.
Cliff took a final flight on Thursday morning
and we also had a catamaran scan the area for several more days. The dinghy was finally
located floating near the southern sapodilla
cayes of Belize, tragically no Travis and no
engine. We got word that our dinghy engine is for sale in Guatemala, so we assume that
when Avenir washed up the dinghy was still
with her and got immediately stolen from the back before she was reported as aground. There are little villages there and people out fishing on boats. We put a bounty out for the dinghy and engine, so we believe they hid it, removed the engine, then when they knew we were
looking let it wash out to sea on Wednesday
night so as not to implicate them, which lines
up with the currents as to where we found it. If the dinghy came loose when Avenir went off course it would have been in a similar location to Avenir. We are therefore making the
extremely sad conclusion that he had
difficulties and came overboard.
As a bit of background, our catamarans had
left Guatemala on Saturday morning and
arrived into base at Old Belize Monday afternoon. Travis was traveling with them but at his own pace, but had engine issues when
immediately departing the marina in Guatemala, so remained behind to get things fixed. Due to weather, we advised him to remain behind a few more days as the weather window was
tight. He wanted to continue regardless as he was already checked out of Guatemala and
wanted to get 'home' to Belize.
He loved being on the water and having a
good time, being carefree and living on the
edge. He was always very confident despite a
few mishaps. I was really looking forward to
kicking him in the balls when he was back and recovered, then was anticipating the next big Travis stories for weeks hearing all about it.
Miracles do happen, but it doesn't look good. We will always hope for him.
I wish we could have further avenues to
explore, if there were any we would have done it days ago.
We'll get Avenir back next week, all being well. We have captains and one of our catamarans
going down for her so his personal items can
be kept safe.
Sending you all a ton of love. We're here to go through the motions.
Let us know if there's any more info you need
for now
All the best
Rachael"