The owners of MV Wisdom had hired the MV Seabulk Plover to tow the 9,000-ton container vessel from Colombo to Alang in Gujarat to be broken down into scrap. The ship departed from Colombo late on Thursday.
On Saturday afternoon, the tether connecting the two ships snapped in rough weather while the ships were about 12 nautical miles South West of Mumbai.
Unmanned and unpowered, the massive vessel began to drift. With a north-easterly bearing without power, it became slave to wind and ocean currents. The Coast Guard put its vessle ICGS Sankalp on alert to monitor the runaway tanker.
If its drift remained unchallenged, the MV Wisdom would have sliced into the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a disaster for the city.
Thankfully, as the ship drifted closer and closer to the coast, it was stopped in its tracks by the sea bed. It ran aground just three km off the Taj Lands end around 8PM on Saturday. Three-km is a mere nothing in nautical terms.
Comment: they should have known that high winds during the monsoon season currently hitting the Asian region would have given them a problem with only one tug........Ed
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