Skipper Sean Amor’s decision to go to Duiker Island helped save 26 passengers who were aboard the Miroshga pleasure craft.
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Skipper Sean Amor was heading a birdwatching charter when one of the 10 people aboard his boat asked to go to Duiker Island to have a look.
Amor obliged and took the boat towards the island – a decision that helped save 26 passengers who were aboard the Miroshga pleasure craft that capsized near Duiker Island on Saturday.
“It was really by chance we were there,” he said on Monday at Hout Bay harbour, recalling how, minutes before the craft had gone underwater, he had yelled to the passengers to jump off it.
Amor and a few others on his boat, including his colleague Alain Tardin, had managed to pull 26 of the passengers from the choppy water.
Two people who were on the Miroshga, Peter Philip Hyett, 64, from the UK, and crew member John Roberts, 37, of Hout Bay, died.
Amor said when his boat had arrived at the Miroshga shortly after he had spotted a flare and just after hearing from another charter company, Nauticat, about a possible accident, he could see the vessel was taking on water and had drifted towards rocks. Passengers were clinging to the vessel.
“I shouted three times: ‘Listen to me, watch me, get into the water and swim to me,’” Amor said.
Four women, one who had a child with her, jumped into the water and swam to Amor’s vessel, which he could not manoeuvre closer to the Miroshga as crayfish buoys and a line from the vessel’s anchor blocked his way.
People aboard his boat used ropes to drag the women, one using a life jacket as a boogie board, towards safety.
“We were busy loading people when I heard a woman scream, then I saw the white water and the boat rolled,” Amor said.
He and others on his boat then helped passengers aboard it in groups of four.
“One guy on board said his daughter was missing,” Amor said.
He then called out to suspected poachers on a rubber duck and one of them then jumped into the water and helped locate the daughter.
Amor said his boat was meant to carry 12 people, but in the end 26 passengers had been loaded onto it. He had to balance their weight and keep them calm. Some of those rescued cried, he said, while others remained quiet.
Amor said he asked them if anyone they knew was missing.
“One guy and girl were crying. The girl said: ‘Where’s the lady with the red top?’”
Amor was not sure what had happened to this woman.
Brenda Owen, owner of Nauticat Charters, said the accident happened while its vessel, with 85 passengers aboard, was at Seal Island.
“Our skipper heard: ‘May day. May day’… They threw life rings to people without life jackets,” she said. Three people from the Miroshga were helped aboard the Nauticat and Owen said its 85 passengers had been “in an absolute state of shock”.
caryn.dolley@inl.co.za
Cape Times