Scoooter961
Contributor
Copied from Facebook...
This morning around 09:00 while aboard a boat on our way to visit the Rinca Ranger Station in Komodo National Park we noticed some smoke coming from the distance. It wasn’t much, it looked a bit like some heavy exhaust, but we soon realized it was coming from a boat. The captain of our boat quickly found out that it was the Sea Safari VII, an older liveaboard in the area. We couldn’t get much info over the radio so we re-routed our boat to see if our assistance was needed as the boat was clearly on fire now, with black smoke billowing out. As we got closer we could see that the life rafts had been deployed, as had the liveaboard’s tenders. Several speedboats from Labuan Bajo were also en-route as was another day trip dive-boat, who was already in the process of retrieving the guests on the lifeboats. So far as we know all the crew and guests were able to make it off the boat ok, thankfully! The boat was not on anchor or a mooring and was drifting south through the Linta Strait between Komodo Island and Rinca. According to the captain of our boat, the Sea Safari VII later burnt to the water line and eventually landed on the north side of Padar Island.
