Bodies of missing yachtsmen found

Police focus now homicide investigation

VICTORIA• Investigators on Vancouver Island are treating the deaths of two yachtsmen reported missing last month as homicides.

The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit confirmed Friday that human remains found near Ucluelet earlier this month were those of Ryan Daley and Daniel Archbald.

Archbald and Daley arrived by sailboat in Ucluelet on May 13 after an eightweek voyage from Panama and were last seen at the Ucluelet dock on May 16.

The major crime unit said their deaths were not random incidents.

Insp. Dave Hall said positively identifying Daley, who was 43, and Archbald, who was 37, was a significant step in the investigation and officers can now focus on finding who killed them.

Hall said there is no evidence at this time to suggest the case is connected to the disappearance of Ben Kilmer, 41, who vanished from the Duncan area at the same time.

Investigators are in contact with the families of all three men and working to determine what has happened to them, he said.

“Widespread use of social media and the internet as sources of information risks drawing linkages that do not exist, or spreading false information that becomes increasingly difficult for police to untangle in their investigation,” Hall said in a statement.

Police said earlier Archbald and Daley were last seen May 16 walking from the harbour dock area in Ucluelet, a community of about 1,700 people located about 320 kilometres northwest of Victoria on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The two men can be seen on video carrying their backpacks and duffel bags.

Ucluelet dockmaster Kevin Cortes, the last person to see them on May 16, said they had paid for one month of moorage for the boat.

Cortes said Archbald and Daley appeared healthy but tired after a long trip, adding he noticed nothing unusual about them during the three days they spent in Ucluelet.

Archbald’s wife Leah Bliss has said her husband bought the boat in Panama about two years ago and was sailing it back to B.C. to start a sailing charter business. She said Archbald was an experienced sailor and the voyage a dream adventure for him.

She said the couple have two daughters, aged nine and five, and were living in Squamish, just northwest of Vancouver.

Bliss said her husband sounded like he was in good spirits and nothing seemed out of the ordinary in her final phone conversations with him.

Dan Archbald