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Mormugao Port trust on Monday morning pulled out a 1200 tonner Barge “Rio Martina 2” that had run aground at Miramar Beach on Saturday afternoon.
The barge belonging to Goa Barge Owners Association president, Raymond Dsa had run aground at Miramar due to rough weather and damaging of anchor chains in the rough sea.
Miramar beach has had a history of several vessels being grounded, the last being the “Lucky Seven”.
On receiving a call informing them of the barge, MPT marine department officials led by Dy Conservator Capt Manoj Joshi immediately rushed to the location and pulled the barge to safety using the port tug “Tag Shiv” on Monday.
Speaking to reporters, Capt Joshi said they had received a request from two ex-trustees as well as the Captain of Ports.
“We got a call from the Captain of Ports, Panjim that a barge had run aground near the beach and requested help. We also received a request from two of our ex-trustees Chandrakant Gavas and Atul Jadhav.
“We have had a previous bad experience with Lucky 7 and so we took immediate action and decided to send our tug on Monday morning during high tide to pull the barge out. The owner had asked us for help and I was present on the tug for supervising the operations. The barge has now been refloated and has returned to Panjim port safely,” said Capt Joshi
The owner of the barge Raymond Dsa, while expressing happiness over the successful removal of the barge, narrated the sequence of events that caused the barge to run aground.
“On Saturday, my barge was travelling from Panjim port to berth no 9 in MPT when the weather turned rough at around 12.10 pm which is when the barge started drifting towards the shore. The crew immediately dropped anchor, but the anchor chain was damaged and the barge continued to drift. The crew on board then dropped the second anchor. However, the sea was too rough and as the tide increased at around 5 pm, that second anchor chain also got damaged and the bow of the barge which was facing the sea turned around and the barge began drifting towards the Miramar beach where people were standing,” said Dsa.
“We tried to rescue the barge with an L&T tug, but to not avail. We tried yet again with the same tug on Sunday morning, but the barge wouldn’t budge. Finally, on Monday morning we tried the same rescue operation with an MPT tug having more horsepower engines and more pull of 50 tonnes. I am happy that we were successful as Miramar beach has a history where it becomes extremely difficult to pull out grounded vessels,” said Dsa.
