Many emergency calls: Turbulent weekend for water police and sea rescuers
Nils Leiterholt
· 14.08.2023
On Saturday evening at around 5.30 pm, the worried wife of a sailor from NRW contacted the Bremen Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre as her husband had not responded to her calls for 24 hours. She suspected a distress at sea, but was able to inform the officers of the last reported position of the twelve-metre sailing yacht. It turned out that the 57-year-old's yacht was anchored there, so the search for the missing man, which was launched at short notice, was quickly successful.
The officers of the inflatable boat crew from the Rostock water police station quickly realised that the man's serious health problems prevented them from responding to the calls from his wife and the distress coordination centre. The rescue boat "Wolfgang Wiese" had taken two paramedics on board, travelled to the patient and took over the initial medical care of the man. He had collapsed and had to be rescued from his sailing yacht using a stretcher.
The sailor was then taken to the harbour in Timmendorf/Poel, where an ambulance and the emergency doctor were waiting to take him to hospital for further medical treatment. Meanwhile, the sailing yacht was secured by the Wismar water police until the rescue cruiser "Konrad Otto" took over. From there, three crew members set sail to drive the yacht under its own power to the harbour of Kühlungsborn, twelve nautical miles away, accompanied by the rescue cruiser. They docked there shortly before midnight.
Accident on the Elbe- Dutch motorised glider gets stuck
An accident occurred on Saturday afternoon in the Magdeburg section of the Elbe at kilometre 326, when a motorised sailing vessel flying the Dutch flag became stuck on the right bank of the Elbe. The skipper was uninjured in the accident, which presumably occurred due to his own driving error. The pleasure craft was initially secured by the waterway police, who informed the responsible waterways and shipping authority in order to organise the towage. Until then, the vessel, which is not blocking the fairway, will remain at the scene of the accident.
Alcoholised young man drifting on the Baltic Sea
A curious and dangerous incident occurred on Friday morning off Prerow on the Zingst peninsula: at around 9 a.m., it was reported that an apparently drunk young man was drifting on a catamaran in the Baltic Sea. As he claimed to have initially been travelling with another person, a major alert was triggered. This involved the rescue units of the sea rescuers as well as various resources from the Stralsund, Sassnitz and Rostock water police inspectorates, the federal police vessel "Stralsund", the local fire brigade and the Prerow DLRG. However, it quickly became apparent that the 25-year-old was travelling alone, so the search for the second person was quickly stopped. The catamaran, worth almost 3,000 euros, had been stolen from the local surf school by the local man, who was heavily intoxicated and known to the police. After the man was recovered and it was established that his breath alcohol level was 1.87 per mille, he was taken to hospital for a blood test. He faces three criminal charges for drink-driving, theft and endangering shipping traffic. The catamaran was towed back to the beach and handed over to the owner.
