A little bit late on the news, but just came across this today. It looks like there is a real problem down at Padang Padang with a fishing boat that ran aground on the reef at Padang Padang right in the takeoff zone and starting to leak fuel…but don’t take my word for it, read on.
Here is a little report from Slim at Baliwaves.com.
‘Situation we have down at Padang Padang. Well as far as I know at around 7.00pm on the evening of the 11th of July the fishing boat pictured on the cover of baliwaves.com ran a ground just about smack dead in the middle of the take off zone of Padang Padang reef (give or take 5yrds). Now the funny thing is that looking at the angle she hit the reef on I’d have to imagine that she was under power at the time, bow first into the reef. If she had lost power and adrift the strong off-shore wind would have blown her out to sea.
This boat also had a valuable cargo hold full of yellow fin Tuna all in the 50-70kg range that were also abandoned. Needless to say the Padang Padang / Uluwatu folk were all BBQ’ing fish the next night. As of yesterday afternoon the boat is still there in the same position on the reef. And with the tide’s that we have at the moment not being high enough for a tug to extract her until after the Full Moon rises on the 17th.
As of yesterday afternoon the boat started to leak diesel fuel and oil so her hull has been broken by the hard lava flow type reef of Padang Padang. This is going to cause some big problems with the fuel and oil already contaminating the Padang Padang area. The slick was also expanding and heading towards Uluwatu driven by the wind. I just hope it hasn’t gone that far as no one would really know just how much fuel and oil was on board the stricken ship. And if they are able to pull her off the reef there’s every chance that she will just sink as soon as it hits deeper water. So that’s about how much I know at this point in time but if I do get any new info on this crisis I’ll keep you all posted.
Jason Childs got some good photos of as well. Check out Surfing magazine here.
Bluebird Surf 