Cape Town - A boat found floating upside down in the sea off Cape Point has been towed out to sea to be scuttled, the South African Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) said on Monday.
The boat, first spotted by fishermen and reported to the National Sea Rescue Institute on Friday, disappeared again for a while, until a tug employed by the Samsa found it on Sunday evening.
On Friday, sea rescue crews from Simon’s Town sailed out to it and attached strobe lights from life jackets to make it more visible for vessels at sea at night. At that time, the vessel was floating very close to Cape Point.
The boat was most likely a cheaply made barge that was transported down the coast from east Africa by the Agulhas current, salvage experts believe. It may have been lost from a small port or river along the African coast and no lives were believed lost in the process.
“We very much doubt whether there were people aboard her when she was lost, otherwise we would most likely have heard about it,” said a shipping source who preferred not to be identified.
Captain Nigel Campbell, regional head of Samsa, confirmed that authorities doubted the boat was lost at sea with a crew.
“We were alerted on Friday and we sent out a tug to go look for it. The tug searched the area through Saturday and Sunday and eventually found her off Cape Hangklip on Sunday evening,” he said.
“It has not been possible to properly inspect the boat because she is lying upside down in the sea and it is difficult to tell how big she is, because only a portion of her stern is above the water.”
The shipping source said the boat was made of glass fibre and the hull was flat around the after part of the keel.
The tug put crew aboard the upside down boat to attach a tow rope and then began towing it further out to sea to get it away from the sea routes most used by smaller craft. This was a safety precaution to prevent small craft from colliding with it, especially at night. They were then meant to try and scuttle it to make it sink.
According to a marine biologist who accompanied the NSRI to the wreck on Friday, the pattern of growth of marine organisms on the upturned vessel’s hull indicated it had been at sea in its upside down state for about two months. No such vessel had been reported missing to maritime safety authorities over that period or before, Campbell said.
Flotsam from high up the African east coast often float down to Cape Town on the powerful Agulhas current.
As recently as a decade ago, logs of tropical hard wood from a bulk carrier that had broken up by a storm in the Mozambique Channel came ashore at East London, Betty’s Bay and Muizenberg some months later. An abandoned life boat from the same vessel also washed ashore at Betty’s Bay.
Cape Argus