A ham radio operator and Luminous
On November 10, 12 noon, ham-radio operator Rony Moorkoch from a village near Payyanur in Kannur district of Kerala picked up a signal, a SOS from fishing boat ‘Luminous’ that was in distress some 250 nautical miles off Kochi or Mangalore coast. “Such long range signal is a miracle. It should have come from 450 kilometers away on air and the crew members conveyed that they are in distress”, Rony said.
Fishing Boat Luminous registered in Tamil Nadu, sailed with 13-member-crew on October 15 from Kochi, and she suffered an engine failure on November 9. After all the efforts to restart the engine failed, the owner of the vessel, Cleetus who was part of the crew, started sending out the distress signal.
Fishing boats in India don’t have any modern communication equipment and they relay in VHF wireless sets to relay their messages. In this case, Rony picked up that relay message, and he promptly communicated to Coastal Security Police at Nileshwar in Kerala.
With fishing boat lying 200 more nautical miles away in sea, the police with their range very limited – 12 nautical miles in this case – communicated the message to Coast Guard Mangaluru.
From then on, the bug was kept passing, with Mangaluru Coast Guard after an aerial sortie said that the boat is not in their waters. The fishermen leaders meanwhile were running from pillar to post, from Mumbai Coast Guard Rescue Centre to Coast Guard at Kochi to save their fishermen.
Finally, Mangaluru Coast Guard despatched its Offshore Patrol Vessel, ICGS Vikram to rescue the fishermen. The crippled boat was towed to safety at Bitra Islands, at the nick of the time, before Cyclone Gaja started ravaging Southern Tamil Nadu and settling as Deep Depression at Lakshadweep Islands, somewhere where these fishermen were stranded.
What started as the feeble distress signal picked up by a ham radio operator has come in full circle, meddled with Indian Bureaucratic hurdles, to finally rescue of the fishermen.
After rescue, Cleetus said, ‘My crew and me are starving and we want to have a square meal first’.
