A morning spent answering emails and participating in our Fire drill. All was going quietly until just after my ‘voice from the Bridge’.
The Officer of the watch called me and asked me if I could come to the Bridge. Upon my arrival, she pointed out a fishing boat away on our port side; the crew could be seen waving shirts and life jackets and they were obviously not doing it for fun.
I slowed down and then turned 120⁰ to port and headed back towards them. She appeared to be anchored; a long length of rope stretched from her bow, presumably because she was lying in deep water and had no anchor chain. The crew were leaning over the rail, watching us, their aerobic waving having ceased.
We lowered a tender and off it set towards the boat. One of our Spanish-speaking ladies from the Front Office was aboard, it was unlikely that they would speak English.
Once our tender was near the boat, communication began. It appeared they had a ‘broken’ propeller and that they had been there for 3 days. They had managed to get in contact with their owner and they expected a boat to come and tow them back home the next day.
Their dilemma was that they had almost run out of water and food, hence them trying to attract our attention. This was a relatively straightforward fix and so the tender came back to the ship and, having had water and provisions loaded, it set off back to the boat.
The fishermen were extremely grateful and once all provisions were loaded, the tender returned and once secure, we resumed our voyage.
Fishing boat, complete with washing line
