[imagesource: Lam Yik / Bloomberg]

The 141-metre Nord superyacht, which was sanctioned by the EU, the UK, and US after Russia decided to invade Ukraine, was due to dock in Cape Town Harbour today after setting sail from Hong Kong.

Despite the best efforts of Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, the South African government gave the all-clear for the R9 billion behemoth, owned by Russian Alexey Mordashov, to pull in.

You’re unlikely to see an ANC welcoming party at the harbour, however, because Nord appears to have vanished into thin air.

Business Insider SA first broke the news:

The plan was to arrive in the city on Wednesday, but it is unclear where the yacht is now.

By mid-morning on Tuesday, the Transnet Port Authority told Business Insider South Africa, it had not yet received any written berthing request from the Nord. And by Monday afternoon, the Waterfront Marina had not received an application for the vessel to take up a berth there.

In order to dock, vessels are required to submit a berthing request 72 hours before the estimated time of arrival.

On October 26, Nord went ‘dark’ – meaning it turned off its location transponders – while in Indonesia.

Because of this, the yacht cannot be tracked by any of the numerous online vessel tracking services and there is no information available regarding its voyage.

Those who want to know more have had to rely on unverified scraps of information, such as a possible sighting last week off the coast of the Maldives.

The 142m long, five-deck beast might already be in South African waters, but without the AIS info we just don’t know for sure. We don’t even know if the original AIS [automatic identification systems] information that indicated that Cape Town was the destination was not fake, because it was not confirmed by anyone.

Maybe we’ve all been duped and Cape Town was thrown out as a red herring.

Either way, the fact that nobody can seem to locate a 141-metre superyacht seems more than a little odd.

[source:businsider]