A liveaboard has sunk in the far southern Egyptian Red Sea, after its captain appeared to have disregarded severe weather warnings. The 18 diving guests were able to escape from the boat along with the crew, but most had to abandon their possessions and subsequently spent some eight hours adrift in small boats.
The incident occurred in the early hours of 24 October, halfway through a charter trip out of Hamata. The 30m Egyptian-owned Seaduction, a vessel with three upper-deck double and six lower-deck twin cabins, ran both scuba diving and kite-surfing trips.
Also read: Red Sea liveaboard survivors located
That night most vessels including liveaboards were reported to have heeded warnings of stormy weather and high waves and stayed further north in the more sheltered area of Sataya Reef.
Seaduction, however, had sailed on as far as Elba Reef near the border with Sudan, where the timber-hulled vessel is thought to have sprung a leak.
Also read: 8 still missing after ‘huge wave’ sank Red Sea liveaboard
The boat had been chartered for the “deep deep south” trip by a group of divers from the Laval Subaqua Club in north-west France. Two of the only four members who managed to save their passports in the sinking returned to France last weekend and spoke about the incident to France Info.
Strange angle
Ex-club president François Paillard and assistant treasurer Philippe Galodé said that the trip had been arranged at a dive show in January. The group had arrived in Egypt on 18 October and Paillard described their first four days’ diving as “magnificent”.
Galodé said that he had been dozing at around 3am when his friend asked if he thought the boat was lying at a strange angle. “I went upstairs to see what was going on,” he said. “According to the captain, everything was under control.” Other guests later said that they had noted the list as early as 2am.
“After half an hour, the boat started to shake very seriously,” said Paillard. “We started to take out the life-jackets, assuming that it was not going to get better, no matter what the captain said. Finally we did what the captain did not do, which was to get ready to evacuate.”
By 3.30am water had been rising in the cabin, said Paillard. “We were all saved at the last minute – the boat was listing hard and then completely capsized. It was panic, everyone jumped into the water.” All the divers had managed to don life-jackets but few had had time to get dressed, retrieve passports, phones, cash or any other personal property.
Paillard commented that the 10 crew had followed the captain’s orders but were “not seasoned sailors”.
Spotted from trawler
The liveaboard carried two 5m RIBs but it seems there had been time to launch only one of these and one of the two lifeboats. Amid the strong waves, continuous bailing-out had proved necessary to stay afloat.
The survivors spent eight hours adrift before a trawler spotted an orange lifeboat cover and was able to bring them aboard and provide them with warm clothes. They were later transferred to a naval patrol vessel that brought them ashore, where they were taken by bus to a hotel in Hurghada, arriving only one the morning of 25 October.
The 14 divers who had lost their passports and belongings were left waiting for the French consulate in Cairo to make the necessary arrangements to allow them to travel, but were warned that this might not happen before tomorrow (30 October).
“The consul asked them to take steps immediately with their insurance companies but they can’t do anything,” Nelly Leroux, speaking to France Bleu, said of her 59-year-old husband Pascal. “They have nothing left. My husband doesn’t even have shoes on his feet. The trauma is still very significant – he just told me that he had flashbacks and that he couldn’t sleep.”
Claire Penard, the current president of the dive-club, was still awaiting repatriation when she told France Info that the levels of bureaucracy involved had made the process challenging. “It’s extremely hard,” she said, “and the evacuation of the boat was particularly traumatic for all of us, because we really thought we were going to die.”
Egypt’s Chamber of Diving & Watersports told Divernet: “The unfortunate incident of the Seaduction liveaboard is currently being investigated by the relevant authorities.” Divernet has approached the operator of Seaduction for comment.
Also on Divernet: EXOCET DIVE-BOAT SANK AFTER HITTING RED SEA REEF, RED SEA LIVEABOARD SINKS AT ABU NUHAS, ‘OUR DIVE LIVEABOARD CAPSIZED: NOW WHAT?’, SURVIVORS SPEAK AFTER FATAL RED SEA DIVE-BOAT FIRE, HOW WELL-COVERED IS YOUR LIVEABOARD TRIP?
