The Finnish-flagged ro/ro Midas rescued three sailors from a capsized sailboat off Portugal last weekend, her owners reported. The 15-meter catamaran sailboat capsized on Friday at a position about 150 nautical miles off Portugal, and three crewmembers abandoned ship onto a liferaft.
On Saturday, Midas passed by the vicinity of the casualty during a transatlantic voyage. At about 1630 hours, Portuguese authorities requested that she divert to the scene to investigate an EPIRB distress signal.
That night, she arrived at the site and located the survivors’ raft. The surface conditions were too rough to launch the ship’s rescue boat, so the crew waited for daylight to make arrangements to bring the raft alongside. When in position, they fired over a rocket line to the raft and pulled it in. Read on.
