All boat skippers in the area, charter operators, pilots, are being urged to join in the search.
Four Australian surfers and three Indonesian crew members have been missing since Sunday night after their little wooden charter boat hit a storm after leaving Nias and failed to reach the island of Pinang in the Bankyaks, fifty clicks away.
The boat became separated from another vessel with eight of their other pals on board in the night as the weather went bad.
The four surfers, Elliot Foote, Steph Weisse, Will Teagle and Jordan Short had been travelling around Nias to celebrate Foote’s thirtieth birthday.
The day before boarding the boat, Foote posted a series of photos of him tearing hell out of the joint on Instagram and writing:
oho gulah Sorake … so good being back in Indo after so many years. Sharing waves with mates and the queen 🙌
Starting the trip off with hiking in the North Sumatran jungle and seeing Orangutan’s was an amazing experience and something that I look forward to doing again for a longer time and going deeper. Bukit Lawang is a beautiful spot with such kind people.
View this post on Instagram
Foote’s Dad Peter, who paid for the trip to Nias as his son’s birthday present, told the Sydney Morning Herald,
“They have life jackets on board, they had food and water and there is shelter on the boat. It has a roof/apparently the waves weren’t that problematic. It was just the visibility in the storm. We’re all hoping they’ve either run out of fuel or they got lost and missed the island or more likely there may be an engine failure on the boat, which unfortunately doesn’t have any GPS.”
On Monday night, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade chartered a plane to join volunteers and the Indonesian police and military in the search.
All boat skippers in the area, charter operators, pilots, anyone who makes their coin ferrying surfers to and fro through the islands is being urged to join in the search.
get an EPIRB, kidz!
https://youtu.be/_p_rsHDen9…
epic all alive – found floating on boards
great news
level one bouyancy devices.
Found alive.
https://www.9news.com.au/wo…
Hope they get found/are safe. The gov run ferry down to the telos was fucked, let alone being in one of those ‘speed boats’. Love to the families.
We had a very tough crossing from Padang toward Kandui. Very rough. Upon arrival at Burgers next morning to hide from wind, we were radioed that a Saffa had fallen overboard peeing off the side at night on another charter. Dude survived 23 hours in sea.
Lets hope these guys are found safe. It’s not far from Nias, but they could be drifting anywhere
Gosh. Know this feeling all too well. Time is of the essence. All hands on deck you would hope. Xox
Be extremely devastating that mates on another boat made it, but they drew short straws on the other craft? I’d only be looking at that trip daytime in convoy at least.
All prayers out and hope found safely.
Fuck. Hope they’re found . Dont mess with real ocean without real preparation. That craft isnt it.
After the Rip Curl boat sank a handful of years back, I’d certainly want to pack a satellite phone were I travelling by boat around Indo. Hopefully these folks will be rescued safely.
Hoping they are all found safe. I’m mates with one of the guys.
What sucks is the lack of response from the Australian government. The families are having to fund private airplane search themselves. Looks like some of the charter boats are on search this morning to help out ! hoping for some good news during the day.
Hope they find your mate.
What’s the Australian government got to do with it? How about pointing the finger at unscrupulous ‘resort’ operators who think they can get away with giving their workers absolute minimum wages and so pressure them into making rash decisions so that they can feed their families, or how about the tourists who could themselves had made the obvious decision to wait until the weather settled and/or sun came up? They should be ok barring some extraordinary event as this sort of shit happens a lot but you want us to pay our tax dollars to solve what’s most likely some tight-arse money grubbing tour operator’s fuck up? You’re fucking kidding.
Australia has more than enough wealth to fund such things. And Australians will do Australian things. Be kind xox
Fucking nuts to be taking one of those boats at night. Equatorial squalls can be heavy around Nias. Hopefully they are just drifting around or at Afulu.