Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th of July 2018

Case name: 2018_07_07-WM279
Situation: 8 travellers from Cap Spartel returned to Morocco by own forces
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases:

On Saturday, 7th of July, at 8am CEST, we were alerted to a boat in distress that had left from Cap Spartel at 3am local time, carrying 8 people. We contacted the boat and tried to find out their GPS position. At 9:40am the group contacted us. They were not able to send their position but asked for immediate rescue. At 9:44am we called the Spanish rescue authority Salvamento Marítimo and informed them about the case. We also sent an email to the respective authorities to document the alert. At 10:31am the travellers described to us two ships that were close to them. We passed the information to Salvamento Marítimo in an email and called them at 10:41am as well. The operator asked us to call the Moroccan authorities. In the following hours, we tried to reach the boat again and to get news from Salvamento Marítimo. At 5:53pm a contact person managed to establish contact to the travellers, they were still in water and described a cargo ship close to them. At 6:02pm we called Salvamento again and informed them. We couldn’t reach the boat any more. At 8:27pm Salvamento confirmed that they would be searching for the boat, but had not found it yet. At 10:05pm the contact person informed us that he had reached the boat and the travellers were still at sea. At 10:25pm the travellers called us and told us they would try to reach the Moroccan shore on their own as they were very exhausted. The next day at 1:06pm a contact person confirmed that they had managed to return to Morocco safely.