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SINGAPORE: The two unmanned Singapore-registered barges, found beached on Malaysia's east coast on Sunday, were on their way to Singapore from China when they were hit by bad weather.
Owned by Singapore-based company Pacific Ocean Engineering and Trading, the vessels - "Winbuild 1802" and "Pulau Tiga 3708" - are newly-built and were making their way to Singapore when the tow line snapped in bad weather off the coast of Vietnam on the 21st of last month, causing them to drift for miles - about the distance from Singapore to Thailand.
The tug boat, on failing to find the vessels, then proceeded to Ho Chi Minh City (in Vietnam), where crew members reported the incident to the Vietnamese authorities as well as to the Maritime Port Authority of Singapore and the Singapore police.
Pacific Ocean said that it also received help from the Vietnamese port authorities to search for the missing barges, by air and sea. However the effort proved futile in rough seas, which saw waves of up to 5 metres high.
The company told Channel NewsAsia it suspected the barges had drifted towards Malaysia, but could only confirm this on Tuesday evening.
"We thought that it cannot drift to nowhere, it must be grounded somewhere. It's a matter of who found it first and it just happened that we got a call from our shipping agent in Malaysia and told us some of the villagers in Kuala Lumpin saw the barges grounded at the beach," said Gary Quah, Manager, Pacific Ocean Engineering and Trading.
The company, which has been operating since 1990, says it is making arrangements to have the vessels towed to Singapore by Thursday.
It's investigating the incident including how the steel wires could have snapped in bad weather.
Pacific Ocean adds that this is not the first time such an incident has happened.
The first time a similar episode happened was two years ago, when it again lost another one of its vessels in bad weather. - CNA /dt
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