Thirty-two-year-old Nafraz Hassan, the owner of the vessel ‘Lady Shazeeda’ which sank on Christmas night says that he is most grateful for the lives of his seven-member crew and to the relevant authorities who assisted in saving the vessel’s engineer, 57-year-old Christopher Williams. Speaking to the Sunday Stabroek yesterday, Hassan related what he knew, based on the sequence of events that were related to him by the boat captain on what occurred off the Pomeroon during the moments when the boat was about to sink. He told this newspaper that according to the vessel’s captain, the boat sank at about 8:30 pm on Christmas night when a wave from a heavy storm hit the boat. “The boat sink like about 8:30 on Christmas night… when the captain call me he say when they left Claxton Bay in Trinidad they had good weather, that it was sunny and nice but when they come in Guyana and reach Region One, the water and the weather was a little rough…he said when they reach between Regina and Pomeroon they had really bad weather and like a storm come out of nowhere and just lash the boat and it sink.”
He further related that before the boat sank, the captain realized the possible outcome, and as such, he and his crew members donned their life jackets and grabbed onto a life raft. However, as they were tossing in the turbulent waters, Williams reportedly drifted further way, leaving behind the other six men.
According to the owner, the six men continued to drift in the waters and were rescued the following day at about 11:30 am by a fishing boat. They then contacted Hassan and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Coast Guard and informed both parties that their boat had sunk and that Williams had drifted away from them.
Upon receipt of this information, the Coast Guard immediately deployed to the area where they located the six crew members and took them to safety to the Charity Wharf. They then conducted a search for Williams and an aerial search was also carried out by Roraima Airways which helped in locating Williams. The owner said that his licensed vessel was coming back to Guyana loaded with a quantity of cement and thin set. Although he could not give an estimate, he said that he lost a lot of money. The ‘Lady Shazeeda’ left the shores of Guyana on December 8 enroute to Trinidad. A release from the GDF had stated that they had conducted a search and rescue operation in response to a distress signal detected by the Timehri control tower off the Essequibo Coast on Boxing Day and a response team was dispatched to the location where they assisted in rescuing Williams after some hours.
The release noted that Williams had drifted for more than 19 hours after the boat sank and that he was rescued about 4 nautical miles off the mouth of the Pomeroon River. He was then taken to the Charity Hospital for a medical checkup.
