Greek authorities on Wednesday recovered the body of a man missing since the weekend off the southeastern island of Symi after a group of eight tourists on a sailing boat ended up in the sea unable to regain their vessel.
A Coast Guard statement said the body was found in the morning west of the Dodecanese island, and was identified as the missing man. It was taken to the nearby island of Rhodes for a post-mortem.
Local reports said that the eight German nationals – four men and four women – had apparently got into the sea Sunday to swim, leaving nobody on the yacht which drifted away out of their reach.
The first survivors, a man and a woman, swam to shore near the Panormitis Monastery on the southern tip of Symi, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation by air and sea.
Shortly before midnight, another woman was located by a fishing boat. Just after 1.20 a.m., a Coast Guard vessel found four more people, bringing the total number of survivors to seven.
