What happens if a body is found out at sea?

I have definitely wanted to push a few that were still alive over.

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Being serious now, I would definitely be in contact with the CG if someone died onboard. Still not hauling around a dead guy in tropical heat for long with no cold storage, but they could come get him if they wanted to.
“Bill died 3 weeks ago, we had a nice service, last stitch and all, sorry we forgot to tell anyone” would probably look bad.

There was a case where a guy went nuts, ended up MOB not recovered, and the skipper didn’t have an easy time of it. It seemed like authorities suspected everyone had enough of him and gave him a helping hand off the boat at first. I’ll see if I can find it.

I ran radio relay from Acapulco in a situation where a friend operating a yacht southbound encountered a “Mayday” hail on VHF made by another friend northbound on the Baja coast and responded. The inappropriate “Mayday” was made because the other captain had his only crew die of a heart attack while off watch, and the captain was very distressed and without sleep for some time. My involvement was contacting the USCG via SSB to apprise them of the situation and assist them making contact with the on-scene parties. Turns out that since there was no immediate threat to life, there would be no assistance or involvement from the USCG. So they trash bagged him and turned down the AC in the cabin and the captain brought him to San Diego.
All of the details make for a good SNAFU story, not the least of it being the name of the yacht upon which the crew perished: “Quiet Heart”.

We had the same experience on a cable ship. The bosn died of a heart attack and was placed in a body bag and stored in the chill box while we were diverted to Southampton to offload the remains.

I remember this too and is why I’m always careful who I let come aboard even just for evening sails.