Thursday, 19 May 2016

20th May - oops

Friday 20th May 2016

We awoke the other morning to find a very large, majestic liveaboard dive vessel moored nearby.  I sat in Sam’s bar, charging my computer and battling with the internet, and watched about twenty passengers coming ashore, and heading to the airport.  They seemed to have had a great time.



Later in the day one of our sailing friends, who is the very helpful source of all information told me that apparenlty last year this very boat sank on a reef!

It was wild weather and they were advised to take shelter in a bay, but all of the passengers wanted to go diving and the captain was sanguine about it all and anchored near a reef.  Then…believe it or not…they ALL went for a night dive.  Possibly somebody was left on board, but this somebody didn’t know how to prevent the boat from dragging the anchor chain, running aground, and…sinking!!

The passengers had to be evacuated; the boat was salvaged and towed off to the Philippines to be mended; the company was fined US$750million for damaging the reef…What a schemozzle!!


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