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Russian rescuers resume search for missing sailors from foreign ship
02/16/2009 Source:Translation: RusNavy.com
Russian rescuers on Monday resumed the search for the missing sailors who attempted to evacuate in inflatable rafts from the sinking cargo ship New Star, Venyamin Ivanychev, a duty officer of the Vladivostok Naval Rescue Corporation Center, told Ria Novosti.
The New Star, which sails under the Sierra Leonean flag and is owned by a Hong Kong company, caught in a storm in the Sea of Japan and began sinking. All 16 crewmembers crammed into the lone inflatable raft available to escape to shore. They were all Indonesian and Chinese nationals.
The crew of the Russian coast guard vessel Primorie saved 8 of the foreign sailors in the midst of the storm, with waves reaching up to 7 meters. The remaining 8 sailors were swept away by waves and their fate remains unknown.
“During the search for the 8 missing sailors, the crew of the rescue tugboat Lazurit will also engage in the search for the New Star. The vessel disappeared from the screen of the locator of the Lazurit on Sunday night. It is possible that the ship is still adrift on the surface, but waves have carried it out of the field of view of the locator,” the officer said.
On February 12, the New Star, after having been denied permission to leave by border authorities, the captain of the port, and the management center of the movement of ships, left the Nakhodka and illegally crossed the Russian border, Natalia Rondaleva, an official from the press center of the Border Service of the Russian Federal Security Service for the Primorie region, told the news agency.
According to the official, Russian border authorities, acting according to international maritime law, forced the boat to stop and reverse course. It was discovered that the boat had 16 people on board: 6 Indonesians and 10 Chinese. The captain of the boat is an Indonesian national.
During the return trip to Nakhodka on February 15, the boat hit a storm. The wind blew at more than 28 kilometers per hour, and waves reached 6-7 meters. Given the difficult conditions, the captain decided to evacuate the boat using an inflatable raft. The captain said he made the decision after the motor broke down and the boat began filling up with water.
The Lazurit rescue boat quickly reached the area of the incident with equipment to rescue the crew. People could have been evacuated from the sinking boat into the Russian boat through special rescue nets through the air, Rondaleva said. She added that the competent Russian authorities have launched an investigation into the matter.