When they were about 60 miles off the port of Stad on Norway's west coast, they encountered rough conditions with waves of up to 15 feet. The crew sent a mayday at about 1800 hours Tuesday evening, according to Norwegian authorities, and a helicopter was dispatched to the scene. The aircrew found that the boat was not in distress and had issued a false alarm, according to Norwegian media. 

The great irony of Thamas Tangvald’s life was that he could never see nor comprehend how negative his father's influence really was. What he never grasped was that his father was in fact an agent of tragedy.