At 2:05 am last Monday, the regulator of the SNSM rescue station in Saint-Martin received a call from CROSS-AG (Regional Operational Center for Surveillance and Rescue in the West Indies and Guyana) for a boat sinking offshore from the Bay of Marigot with about sixty migrants on board.
These migrants themselves alerted the emergency services with their cellphones, calling the SAMU which relayed the call to the CROSS, because it is an emergency at sea.
The SNSM of Saint-Martin therefore decides to intervene with 2 teams on their 2 nautical means. The “Rescue Star” semi-rigid set off first, with 4 crew and a mobile motor pump, followed 10 minutes later by the SNS 129 boat, with 5 crew members. The CROSS does not have the position of the vessel in difficulty, but it is in telephone contact with a person on board who claims to be “off the Bay of Marigot, in Saint Martin”.
The boat is taking on water and there is no light on board. No VHF, no pyrotechnics (flares / hand flares, etc.), no life jackets, no whistles, so nothing to indicate their location in the middle of the night, except a few cell phones that still work.
The SNSM crews are on deck, with their searchlights and thermal binoculars, in a race against time, to find this sinking boat.
The SNS 269 boat from Saint-Barthélemy was called in as a backup, as well as a Metal Shark from the Coast Guard on the Dutch side and there were therefore four rescue boats plying the sea from Galisbay to Baie aux Prunes. Without success.
The CROSS puts the rescuers on a conference call with the victims; a staff member of the SNSM speaks Creole perfectly, but the migrants cannot explain where they are… First, “Baie de Marigot”; then “maybe a little closer to the Dutch side”… It's the cacophony on board; people are panicked; we hear tears and prayers; they say that there are women and children, that their boat is sinking and that we must act quickly, because the water is starting to rise.
Rescuers ask if migrants see their flashing lights: negative! They send a parachute rocket to Marigo Bay, they still can't see anything. Then the passengers explain that the wind brings them closer to Saint-Martin, but that they are stranded on a reef ... Suddenly, they would rather be east of Saint-Martin.
The CROSS then asks the Metal Shark and the SNS 269 to follow the coast towards the South and the Rescue Star and the SNS 129 to bypass the island of Saint-Martin by the North. Near Tintamarre Island, the Rescue Star crashes into another distress rocket, but the migrants still see nothing; neither rocket nor flashing light.
The Rescue Star goes around Tintamarre, while the SNS 129 passes behind Cay Verte and arrives at Oyster Pond where they cross the SNS 269 and the Metal Shark. The tour of the island has been completed but still without any sign of the sinking boat.
The CROSS asks SNS 269 to go back to Saint-Barth and to go around their island too, in case the migrants have taken the wrong island and are stranded on a reef in Saint-Barth. The Metal Shark continues its tour of the island of St. Martin and the CROSS asks the Rescue Star and SNS 129 to stay in the eastern sector.
It is then 5:30 a.m., the hope for the rescuers that the light of day will help them visually locate the boat ... But, a few minutes later, the CROSS calls everyone to the VHF, because the boat, which left Dominica, was located at daybreak, indeed landed on a reef ... but in Guadeloupe.
Fortunately, their boat was well placed on the cay and was no longer sinking. It was finally the SNSM stations and the gendarmes of Guadeloupe who saved them by taking charge of 64 migrants (52 men, 11 women and 1 child, of Haitian, Colombian, Venezuelan and Indian nationality). An investigation has been opened.
After more than 3 hours of research around the bad island, the volunteer team members of the SNSM stations of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy returned at 6 am to their respective home port.
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