The 3 masted sailing yacht SV Concordia capsized and sank some 480 kms off Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday 17th February 2010. At 2.30pm the ship experienced a sharp and sudden vertical blast of strong wind (known as a 'microburst') which managed to knock SV Concordia onto its side in a mere 15 seconds, and sink within 30 minutes. The 48 students and 16 crew aboard jumped overboard and then managed to crawl into the three life rafts and a dinghy launched during the emergency.
Rescue took 50 hours as the crew of 64 spent two nights at sea in distressing circumstances. Their radio equipment was underwater and unusable, so an emergency beacon was automatically released into the water.
The distress signal was apparently first picked up by Brazilian coast guards at 10pm on Wednesday 17th, but it was not until 8am on Thursday 18th that Brazilian Search and Rescue contacted the Canadian Rescue Co-Ordination Centre to liaise over the Concordia's signal. Brazilian and Canadian authorities then tracked the source of the distress signal, so that at 5pm that day a search aircraft took off, locating the life rafts at 8pm, nearly 30 hours after the accident.

The 57.5 metre long Concordia was built in 1992 and is operated by the Canadian-based Class Afloat programme, giving students the opportunity to crew a full-rigged ship and travel around the world. The Class Afloat programme is run from West Island College International, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, from which the vessel departed in September 2009.

The ship crossed the North Atlantic to the UK before visiting the Mediterranean and Black Seas, then hugged the North-West African coast and across to Recife in Brazil from where she departed on 9th February.
The 48 young people were Grade 11 & 12 and first year university students, some only 16 years old. A year's sailing programme tuition fees are quoted at US$40,600.