Tanker Crew Rescues Seven from Sinking Fishing Vessel

An tanker picked up seven crew embers from a sinking fishing vessel in the Gulf of Finland.

While en-route from the Port of Ust-Luga to Copenhagen on February 6, the tanker SСF Angara received a distress signal from the Russian fishing trawler Pongoma, which was sinking on the traverse of Tallinn, 26 nautical miles offshore, SCF Group said on Monday.

The tanker and her crew, under the leadership of master Alexey Maksimovsky, responded to the request for help, and following the instructions received from the rescue center in Tallinn, diverted to assist the ship in distress.

During a rescue operation, all seven members of Pongoma’s crew were brought aboard the tanker. Two fishermen in need of urgent medical care were then evacuated by helicopter to Helsinki. The remaining five crewmembers were airlifted to Tallinn by the Estonian rescue service.

SСF Angara then resumed her voyage.

SCF noted crews on board its vessels have assisted seafarers in distress on numerous occasions, including full-fledged rescue operations, carried out independently.

Most recently, in November 2019, the crew of the supply vessel Gennadiy Nevelskoy rescued three fishermen in the Sea of Okhotsk.

In March 2019, a crew of the tanker SCF Surgut rescued 12 people from a yacht caught in a storm in the Caribbean Sea.

In 2014, the crew of the tanker SCF Krasnodar saved six yachtsmen who had become stranded on a life raft in the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil for several days. In 2016, the crew of the tanker Leonid Loza rescued ten people from a fishing trawler off the west coast of Africa.

In 2010, the tugboat Dobrynya took part in the rescue of nine fishermen swept into the Gulf of Finland on a detached ice floe.

In 2008, the crew of the tanker SCF Khibiny rescued 13 people from an Indonesian vessel that had sunk in the Straits of Malacca.

In 2007, the crew of the LPG carrier SCF Tomsk rescued 41 people in the Atlantic Ocean 500 miles from the Cape Verde Islands. The rescued seafarers had been stranded in the open sea for over two weeks, staying without either food or drinking water for several days by the moment the rescue operation began.