During the night of July 24 to 25, the telephones of the staff of the SNSM Station in Saint-Martin rang at 0:45 am…
As is often the case at such a time, it is the CROSSAG on the other end of the line that wakes up the rescuers for an emergency at sea.
A witness in a restaurant on the beach in Baie Nettlé just called the Gendarmerie to report that he had just seen no less than 4 successive parachute rocket launches between his position on the beach and the Marina Port La Royale. Impossible to say if they were drawn from Marigot Bay or from the Lagoon just behind ... The gendarmerie sends a pedestrian patrol and contacts the CROSSAG to relay the alert.
The CROSSAG launches a call for witnesses by the VHF to ships in the area and simultaneously requests our team of Sea Rescuers to go and investigate on the spot; So 4 team members meet at the station a quarter of an hour later to take the intervention bags and leave aboard the Rescue Star.
We walk along Marigot Bay from Marina Fort Louis to Nettle Bay under an almost full moon; watching for any sign of distress; but everything seems calm; there are not many people awake on the sailboats manned in the area; no one to ask if they saw something suspicious… Nothing to report in the bay; therefore the CROSS asks us to pass under the bridge of Sandy Ground to go and see inside the Lagoon.
We take a big grain by going to Marina Port La Royale, or, there too, nobody is awake (or at least is not outside in this torrential rain).
We turn around and follow the channel to Nettle Hill where there are a few ships and above all a lot of wrecks; but nothing suspicious and no sign of a person in difficulty….
After more than an hour of fruitless research, the CROSS gives us freedom to maneuver and we dock the Rescue Star at 02:50 am.
Our team members go home, tired, drenched and unhappy; because sometimes finding nothing is worse than meeting someone causing distress signals; since we don't know if there was really a problem or if they are once again “clowns” who had nothing else to do but have fun with distress rockets and thus trigger teams on land and sea for “ghost” research.
We will certainly never know!
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