We love a good shipwreck. Witness our obsession with the Seli 1, which ran aground at Blouberg a couple of years ago. It is thus with interest that we discovered that a Japanese-built, Chinese-run fishing trawler, the Eihatsu Maru, ran aground on Clifton 1st Beach on Saturday morning, as we were preparing to head home from Mozambique. We went down to Clifton on Sunday afternoon to check out the ship. Here’s a video showing the vessel, and the small tug on standby just offshore.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eGfQgoYUHE&w=540″]
This second video shows a helicopter landing on the beach in front of the ship.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3ofSRWPpUY&w=540″]
The ship apparently ran aground in thick fog, and it seems pretty miraculous that she missed all the boulders off the Clifton Beaches. Very miraculous indeed. Her hull was not damaged but she had nearly 100 tons of fuel on board which would cause some serious misery on this beautiful stretch of expensive real estate and pristine coastline should any of it leak out.
If you’re interested in visible shipwrecks, check out my ebook Cape Town’s Visible Shipwrecks: A Guide for Explorers!
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