Mickeys

More than 1,000 people have been trapped on two passenger ferries and two cargo ships stuck in ice in the Baltic Sea off Sweden’s east coast.

The vessels, which were among about 50 ships stuck firm – some for several days – in the thick Baltic ice, have now been freed.

The Swedish Maritime Administration and ice-breaking vessels mounted a rescue but were unable to reach the vessels immediately because of gale-force winds around the Stockholm archipelago and the Finnish island of Aland.

Speaking before the ships were freed from the ice, Peter Lindquist, spokesman for the rescuers, said: “As soon as they break the ice, it freezes over again.”

Helicopters and military hovercraft had been on standby in case rescuers needed to evacuate the vessels.

The cruise ships involved have been named as the Amorella, a passenger ferry with 943 people on board, the smaller Via Mare ferry carrying 66 people, the roll-on-roll-off ferry Sea Wind with 32 people and the Regal Star, a cargo ship with 56 people on board.

Two other ferries that got stuck in the ice were able to break free earlier.

“It has been a lot colder than normal in the southern parts of the Baltic sea, but in the north all is normal with normal levels of ice,” Tommy Gardebring of the Maritime Search and Rescue Centre in Gothenburg said.

“However, in the worst-affected areas, the ice breakers that normally operate haven’t been able to cope with the ice…”

taken from SkyNews

Mossel Bay – The owner of a Mossel Bay surfing school has described how he and two other surfers rushed into the sea to help three boys and a man who were in trouble in the sea at Diaz Beach on Saturday.

“We aren’t heroes,” said Llewellyn Whittaker, about himself and two other surfers, Michael Sheppard and Heinrich Engelbrecht.

Another two boys drowned in the incident. Only one of the two boys has been identified. He is 11-year-old Nkululeko Xaka from Kwanonqaba, according to Bernadine Steyn, Southern Cape police spokesperson.

At about 13:45 on Saturday, a group of boys went swimming at the beach. Whittaker described how he had started a surfing lesson on Saturday shortly after a development competition for juniors had finished at Diaz beach.

“I had barely started explaining to my student – a medical doctor whom I only know as Janine – how sea currents work, when I first spotted three people in the waves. It looked like they were in trouble.”

Whittaker dashed into the sea with the surfboard he was using for the lesson.

Initially he only saw a man and two boys in the ocean.

He pulled the man onto his surfboard and swam to the beach with one of the boys. “The boy wasn’t breathing.”

According to him, an unknown youth tried to pull another boy from the water, but the victim kept pulling the youth under.

“It was very bad – the youth (who tried to save the boy) was yelling ‘I can’t go on, I can’t go on’.”

Sheppard rushed into the surf after he heard Whittaker whistling and saw him waving his arms. He and Engelbrecht brought two more boys, who were lying face down in the water by that time, to the beach.

Steyn confirmed on Sunday that two boys (one who went swimming and one who presumably tried to save him) were still in hospital.

According to the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), the adult man was also taken to hospital. His condition was stable.

taken from News24

The City of Cape Town has issued a shark warning for several popular beaches on the False Bay coast.

Great White

It said on Friday there had been “high shark activity” on that stretch of coast, especially at Fish Hoek, St James and Muizenberg beaches.

This was probably the result of the presence in the bay of a number of seals and schools of yellowtail.

If shark warnings were sounded, bathers should leave the water immediately and not return to it until the shark spotters had indicated it was safe to do so.

People should also swim in groups, and make sure other people could see them.

taken from News24