JOHOR BAHRU: Four Indonesian men were found safe after floating 16 hours at sea after the cargo boat they were travelling in sank in an incident in waters off Muar, two days ago (Monday).
Johor State Maritime Director First Admiral (Maritime) Aminuddin Abdul Rashid said the cargo boat they were travelling in earlier had sunk, they also lost communication with another boat that they were sailing together.
All those who were rescued were the skipper and crew members of the boat aged between 34 and 54 years, who were reported to have clung onto the safety jacket to float before they were finally found by another trading boat, MT Sinar Marsela, at 5.3 nautical miles east of Pulau Rupat, Indonesia at 6pm yesterday.
“Based on information received from another cargo boat that was sailing together with KM Bahari Indah 5 (the victim’s boat), both boats had sailed out together from Dumai, Indonesia at about 6 am (Malaysian time) on Dec 9.
“However, after going through big waves and bad weather while sailing at about 29 nautical miles southwest of Muar, KM Bahari Indah 5 was reported to have lost contact at about 3pm (the same day).
“As such, a search and rescue (SAR) operation for the cargo boat had been activated at 11 am yesterday involving maritime assets from the Batu Pahat Maritime Zone,” he said in a statement, here today.
Aminuddin said the search also used the Sea Monitoring System (Swasla) which is to track down the last position of the cargo boat, besides cooperating with several agencies such as Badan SAR Nasional Indonesia (Basarnas) Pekan Baru; Maritime Department, police and the maritime community.
However, as the victims had been found, the SAR operation had been discontinued at 7.10 pm last night. — Bernama
