All leisure boaters and regular marine traffic were warned about the lost cargo from the 79 metre Norwegian registered vessel Sally in heavy seas off the east coast of the UK. The cargo loss is about 55 miles due east of Lowestoft and the vessel was travelling from Sweden to the UK. The vessel has a crew of 6 on board. According to coastguard the lost cargo, 20 bundles of timber, approximately 3 tonnes per bundle of wooden planks, measuring 1 m x 3m were stowed on deck. After the vessel hove to, the crew attempted to secure the shifting cargo but the weather was too bad to allow the crew back on deck and the lashings broke allowing the cargo to go overboard.
The coastguard also informed that the weather forecast described the seas as rough or very rough and there are squally showers locally. The vessel will be bound for Shoreham once the weather abates and marine surveyors from the MCAs Southampton office have been alerted to the ships imminent arrival.
Mario Siano, Watch Manager at Yarmouth Coastguard said individual planks if they come adrift of even larger bundles may not present too much of a threat to larger vessels in the regular shipping lanes, but impacting on smaller craft and certainly leisure vessels may cause significant damage, hence our broadcast warning today.
He told that they are in complete contact with the Dutch Coastguard and their aerial surveillance aircraft in order to plot the location of the patches of wood as they move south on the tidal drift, although there is of course a danger in heavy seas the bundles could split and cause the wood to raft together creating a bigger patch.
