• No contact since distress beacon activated on Friday • Naval helicopter reports sighting of yacht and skiffSearch and rescue teams hunting for a retired British couple feared kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean have spotted a yacht towing a pirates' skiff towards the Somalian coast.Nothing has been heard of Paul and Rachel Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, since the distress beacon aboard their 38ft vessel, Lynn Rival, was activated on Friday night.The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is "urgently investigating" reports that the couple, on a round-the-world dream voyage, are being held for ransom after being boarded as they headed through dangerous waters towards Tanzania from the Seychelles.Tonight the European Union Naval Force Somalia reported a helicopter from a ship involved in the search had spotted a yacht towing a skiff, or small pirate boat, 200 miles south-east of the Somalian port of Harardhere, a pirate haven."The helicopter went up to look at some skiff activity in the area.
The light was just fading.
As he was heading across the horizon he saw the yacht," said EU naval force spokesman, Commander John Harbour."He closed in as far as he could and saw the yacht towing a small skiff, then he had to return to ship.
We have no confirmation it is the Lynn Rival.
But we are treating the sighting very seriously.
It was the first yacht we've seen.
It's in the area where we've been looking for this yacht," he added.
The search was continuing throughout the night.Pirates were suspected after a man, calling himself Hassan, contacted Reuters news agency and said: "The British couple are in our hands now.
We captured them as they were touring the Indian Ocean." He added they were healthy and ransom demands would follow.Mr Chandler, 58, a former engineer, and his wife, 55, a retired economist, sailed from the Seychelles on Thursday bound for Tanzania via the Amirante islands.A cryptic last message on their blog (http://blog.mailasail.com/lynnrival), posted at 0641 on Friday read: "PLEASE RING SARAH".
It is thought to refer to Mrs Chandler's sister, and the capital letters distinguish it from other blog entries.The couple's Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (Epirb) was activated at 2300BST on Friday and picked up by Falmouth coastguard, the marine rescue command centre.A search, covering 1,000 square miles, was launched involving the Combined Taskforce 151, an international naval response set up to combat Somali pirate attacks, along with Nato and EU counterpiracy teams.
HMS Cumberland and HMS Cornwall Royal, both on anti-piracy patrols, are involved.The couple, married for 25 years and who have no children, retired early to pursue their dream of sailing the world and had been living on their boat for three years, said their distressed relatives.Immediately before leaving the Seychelles, where they had been based for seven months, they wrote on their blog: "We'll be at sea for 8-12 days, maybe 14 …We probably won't have satellite phone coverage until we're fairly close to the African coast, so we may be out of touch for some time."Mr Chandler's sister, Jill Marshment, from Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, said the couple had no means to pay a ransom.
"It's a very basic yacht and they don't have the money to pay a ransom.
They were doing it all on a shoestring budget after their early retirement," she said."My last contact with them was on Wednesday when they were looking forward to going and said they would be in contact in two weeks' time."Mrs Chandler's brother, Stephen Collett, told ITV news: "I think everything they've got is invested in their boat, so if they have been captured then the pirates have got the boat, which is as much as they're going to find really."Mr Chandler's widower father, Alfred, 98, who was being cared for by neighbours in Dartmouth, Devon, was said to be "shocked and stressed".Leah Mickleborough, a niece whose wedding the couple attended in Norfolk in September, said they were experienced sailors who had lived on their yacht for years.The family had been told on Friday that the distress signal had been activated, but then switched off again, so had been "fairly confident" it was just an accident."We were just waiting for them to come into docks because it tended to be the case that, out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, it was quite difficult to get hold of them and it was expected that they would dock at a little island," she told BBC Radio 5 Live.The Chandlers spent most of their time abroad after leaving Tunbridge Wells to embark on their adventure more than three years ago, renting out their ground floor flat on a hill overlooking the town.Their extensive blog shows they were enjoying life to the full.The Seychelles, where they described swimming with turtles and dining on fresh local fruits and fish, was "paradise", so much so they stayed for seven months, apart from a visit to the UK in September to see Mr Chandler's frail father and to attend the family wedding.Their adventures had included travelling from Turkey through the Suez Canal, past Saudi Arabia, around to Mumbai then to the Seychelles.They were well aware of the threat of piracy.
Two of their sailing friends had been delayed heading to Tanzania in May "because of the Somali pirate problem", according to their blog.
In another post, in June, they commented: "The seas around the Seychelles are now too rough for the pirates to operate in."Nick Davis, from the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, said waters around the Seychelles had become one of the most dangerous areas for piracy since warships had moved into the Gulf of Aden to protect merchant ships.In the last few weeks pirates have taken a fishing boat, a container ship and a dry bulk carrier.
Pirate activity had been reported in the area the couple were sailing earlier on the day their Epirb went off.
Pirates typically use "mother ships" to sail hundreds of miles to sea and then launch attacks in small skiffs, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.A surge in global piracy incidents off the coast of Somalia has seen attacks this year triple to 47 compared to last, according to the International Maritime Bureau.Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme in Mombasa, said that while the Chandlers' route from the Seychelles to Tanzania was not usually used by cargo ships, the most common target for pirates, it was well within attacking range."With sea conditions so good the area is very favourable to pirates right now.
Nowhere off the coast of east Africa is safe," he said.
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