The Coast Guard, on Sunday, rescued nine fishermen who had been stranded for almost nine days around 47 nautical miles off the Vizhinjam coast, after the engine of their mechanised boat developed a technical snag.
The fishermen, eight of them from the Thoothoor, Pothura, and Kollachal areas of Tamil Nadu and one from the Cheriathura area here, had ventured into the sea from the Vizhinjam harbour on June 4 and after two days of fishing, the engine developed a snag.
They tried to set the engine right. When their attempts failed, they tried to reach out to other fishing boats passing by. “But somehow it did not work out. The last two days were very scary, and finally we managed to pass the information to the crew of a merchant vessel sailing by the area,” said Johnson, one of the rescued fishermen.
The merchant vessel alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Mumbai about the stranded boat.
On receipt of a call on Sunday morning from the MRCC, the Coast Guard station here launched the rescue operation in its newly acquired interceptor boat. The stranded boat was towed back to the harbour after an eight-hour operation, Biju Philip, Assistant Commandant, Coast Guard station, told The Hindu .
The fishermen had set sail for 40 days of fishing and so had enough stock of food and water, said an official with Fisheries Department.
