14 sailors pulled out of sinking ship in yet another daring ops

Fourteen crew members of a merchant cargo vessel were dramatically winched up by the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and the Indian Navy choppers on Wednesday even as the ship capsized 25 nautical miles off Daman during the operation.

This came two days after ICG and Navy rescued 20 sailors of another merchant vessel 40 nautical miles north-west off Mumbai harbour, in what was another extraordinary life-saving operation.

The Coast Guard Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) received a distress call from the director general of Shipping communication centre in Mumbai at 7 am on Wednesday that a Merchant Vessel (MV) named Coastal Pride, a cement carrier, had anchored 15 kilometres off Umargam beach, about 150 kilometres north of Mumbai, following engine breakdown.

While preparing to react to the SOS, the rescuers realised that due to "extremely bad weather, coupled with incessant rains, the vessel was slowly tilting and rolling vigorously," said officials.

A Coast Guard Chetak helicopter was launched from Air Station Daman at 7:40 am and a Naval Seaking helicopter was also immediately launched around the same time from Mumbai to assist in rescue mission, they said. Upon reaching the vessel, the Coast Guard chopper initially pulled up six survivors in two trips and dropped them to Umargam beach. When the Chetak was returning for the third rescue trip, the ship capsized at about 8:45 am.

Thereafter, the Seaking chopper belonging to the Navy picked six of the remaining survivors, and Chetak from the Coast Guard picked up two crew members from the water.