Reports are surfacing that 17 people had to be rescued by the Indonesian Navy after the Grand Komodo-owned liveaboard
Putri Papua sank off the coast of Sorong, in Southwest Papua on Monday morning.
According to local media outlets, Indonesian Naval Fleet Command received a WhatsApp notification at 5.47 am with information that the liveaboard had suffered damage to its engine.
Onboard the 26m-long
Phinisi-class yacht – which caters to a
maximum of just nine divers – were eight Indonesian crew members, three Indonesian nationals and six foreign passengers.
Patrol vessel
Matabongsang-873 was dispatched to the reported location, arriving at 7.22 am to find that Putri Papua was no longer at the co-ordinates first received.
The patrol boat’s crew spotted smoke from
Putri Papua’s damaged engine at 7.46 am, but the liveaboard was already sinking by the time they closed the distance, by which time the passengers and some of the crew had evacuated onto a liferaft.
Lieutenant Colonel Laut Ajik Sismianto, Head of Information Service of Koarmada III said that a lifeboat was deployed at 8.00 am to rescue
Putri Papua’s remaining crew.
It appears that most of those rescued escaped relatively unscathed, although two crew members were injured ‘consisting of one with nails being removed and the other experiencing trauma due to the ship’s rubble,’ and were taken to the Naval hospital in Sorong to receive medical attention.
Of the six foreign passengers, two have been identified as English, two Austrian and two Slovakian, according to the Indonesian Navy’s report.
divemagazine.com
