Gas-Athena

Vessel GAS ATHENA (IMO: 9267950) has been reported to the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) for abandonment. Details: - Flag: Panama - Port: Khor Fakkan - Country: UAE - Owed Wages: 8 months - Number of Seafarers: 16 - Seafarer Nationalities: Philippines, Ukraine - Reported to ITF: 01 Aug 2023 - Status: Open This information is sourced from the ITF Seafarers abandonment list, which tracks cases of crew abandonment worldwide.

On Feb 17, 2017, the "Keswick", enroute from Puerto Moin to Puerto Cortes, assisted the Eastern Passage sailor Peter Henneberry, 60, who was attempting to sail his 11-metre-long sloop "Wanderer" from Roatan to Cartagena, Colombia. Trouble started when another boat making the passage with him experienced engine troubles. He decided to turn around to Roatan and get it fixed. On the way back, he lost his rudder. It rudder broke off right at the bottom of the boat, at the bottom of the transom. With winds blowing about 45 kilometres an hour, Henneberry put out a mayday call for help on his radio with his boat laying on her side. The "Keswick" answered the call and attempted to tow him to safety. But the tanker was too powerful, threatening to tear boat apart up forward because it was see-sawing with no rudder. And so the skipper had let the tanker go. A couple of hours later, another boat showed up and the crew promised to tow the "Wanderer" to Guanaja, an island off Honduras. The wind was still blowing hard and seas were nearly two metres high when the tow line parted in the dark near Guanaja. A Honduran navy boat then took the yacht under tow andpulled it within 50 feet of the outside of the reef and let it go. Henneberry was told that he was inside of the reef, to drop the anchor. But a few seconds later, the "Wanderer" was blown on top of a coral reef. The small, open naval vessel returned about half an hour later, only to be washed up on the reef as well. Henneberry was taken ashore in another boat and went to a hotel. And they all stayed on my boat all night long. The Honduran sailors took shelter in the "Wanderer"’s cockpit during the night because it offered more protection from the weather. The breakers were going right over the top, but with the cockpit covers down, they were sheltered and dry. The 37-year-old sailing vessel, a Cherubini Hunter 36, was towed off on Feb 18 at 1 p.m. at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and docked on the small island Bonacca off Guanaja where the skipper was trying to arrange things to get the boat repaired. Henneberry has raised almost $4,000 through a GoFundMe page (https://www.gofundme.com/help-a-stranded-sailor) to get the work done. He ordered a new rudder from a company in Florida and is waiting for it to be delivered before he gets the boat hauled out of the water to see the damage below the waterline. The propellers have been destroyed. But he had a spare set which fere already fixed. A small pinhole was fixed with a screw in it and stopped the water ingress. Henneberry also needs to fix a broken side stay that snapped when his boat was pulled off the reef. Now he’s trying to figure out how to access the money raised by his GoFundMe appeal.Once the funds of $4,000 have been transferred, they should cover the repairs entirely. The solo sailor made his way south by transiting from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts, then down the eastern seaboard, before hopping across to the Bahamas from North Carolina. The trip has taken him to Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala. His plan now was just to keep sailing. Henneberry, a former Canadian Coastguard deckhand, lives on a small pension. Report with photos: https://www.localxpress.ca/local-news/eastern-passage-sailor-547133