Relatives of the skipper of a catamaran that was found drifting empty off the Great Barrier Reef said today that they had been in "spiritual" touch with him and believe that he is fighting for his life "somewhere dark".

Two days after the official search for Derek Batten and his two crew members was called off, Mr Batten's niece, Hope Himing, said that the trio were kidnapped from their boat, the Kaz II.

The 40ft catamaran was found drifting off the Queensland coast last Tuesday, its engine and computer still running and with food on the table ready to eat. The mystery has been compared to that of the Mary Celeste, the ghost ship found drifting in the Atlantic in 1872 with no sign of the ten passengers and crew.

Forensic investigation has found virtually no clues as to what happened, although investigators have said that the boat had deployed its rubber fenders - which are only used when pulling alongside another boat or docking. They said that it had been drifting since the evening of April 15, only a few hours after it had left port at Airlie Beach, south of Townsville.

Ms Himing, the skipper's niece, told reporters in Brisbane that the official version of events - including the possibility that the three had been knocked off the boat by a wave - did not answer questions about the state in which the catamaran was found.

“It looks like they’ve been boarded," she said. “If it was bad weather, why would their fishing line be out? If it was that bad that it would have knocked three experienced sailors off, why wouldn’t they have put on their life-jackets? It just doesn’t add up for us."

Ms Himing added: “My mum and I are both spiritualists. My mum’s had a really strong feeling from Des (Derek) that he’s somewhere dark and he can’t see and I don’t feel that he’s dead either.

“I don’t think he’s got a lot left in him but I actually don’t think he’s dead, and so everything we can do to get (people) out there looking again is a huge thing."

Asked about Ms Himing's 'spiritualist' comments, a spokesman for the Townsville Water Police said: "I haven't heard that one - but there's not much we could do about it."

Mr Batten, 56, had bought the boat shortly before he and his friends, James Tunstead, 63 and his brother Peter, 69, set off to sail the vessel around the north coast of Australia to their homes around Perth, in Western Australia.

Ms Himing echoed complaints from relatives of the other crew members that the police had called off the search too early, after only three days. "We feel hugely let down by this," she said.

The men's families have described the missing men as experienced and cautious sailors. Peter Tunstead’s daughter, Donna, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “There is not an ’i’ he doesn’t dot or a ’t’ he doesn’t cross - everything was planned.

“I just don’t know what’s happened. I know though, in my heart and in my soul, and so does my whole family, they are fine and they are safe. My dad is going to do everything in his power to come home to my mum and to us girls. My dad loves my mum so much."

With the full-scale official search called off, the familes are now pinning their hopes on a private search. Three charter boats began scouring islands in the area yesterday in the hopes that the men could have swum to safety if they were indeed knocked off the boat.

James Tunstead’s son, Shane, said: “Maybe they’ve all got knocked over by the boom, or something happened at the back of the boat when they were fishing because we know they were fishing at the time by video footage we’ve seen from the Townsville police.”

Warren Webber, police detective inspector, said that despite extensive investigations the case remained a mystery. “We can all come up with various hypotheses and theories as to what may have happened,” he said. “But at this stage our investigations concentrate on just determining exactly what facts we have.

“There is nothing to indicate other people were involved or there may have been some kind of crime."

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