One of the last people to see a foreign‑owned barge before it mysteriously washed ashore on a remote Australian island says the massive vessel was being towed by a boat far too small for the job.
The 100‑metre barge, Nelly 112, ran aground on Athikho Poji a rocky islet in the Torres Strait on January 26. But nine days earlier, retired commercial skipper Noel Gaunt spotted it off the coast of Bali while he was out fishing near Amed in northern Bali.
Gaunt, who has nearly 40 years of maritime experience, said he came within 100 metres of the barge and immediately noticed something was wrong. The vessel towing it, he said, was nowhere near powerful enough.
“It was not a tug,” he recalled. “It was a towing vessel around 50 to 60 feet trying to pull this massive barge, which would be well in excess of a hundred tonnes.”
He said it appeared the crew was struggling to keep the barge within a channel of the Banda Sea to prevent it drifting into the Timor Sea. “It would’ve caused havoc to go through there because the towing vessel wasn’t in command of the barge,” he said. “It was struggling every metre that it took.”
Gaunt said he did not know what happened after the barge continued eastward, but severe weather hit that region of Indonesia in the days that followed conditions that may have contributed to the barge eventually drifting into Australian waters.
Authorities are still investigating how the vessel ended up grounded near Badu Island.
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