Video of the first approach of a commercial ship in the afternoon of June 13 to provide assistance to the fishing vessel, which wrecked hours later off Pylos, is published by “K”.

The managing company reports that the Greek-owned tanker “Lucky Sailor” approached the fishing vessel by order of the Coastal Operations Center, deviating from its original course, having been ordered to offer food and water.

Once they spotted the fishing boat, a crew member from the ‘Lucky Sailor’ came over the loudspeaker saying that they could offer them supplies. It is speculated that the tanker’s intentions may not have been immediately perceived by the operator of the fishing vessel. In a video that “K” has at its disposal, the boat overloaded with people can be seen from a distance putting its engine forward, smoke coming out and moving slowly, as the “Lucky Sailor” has approached it.

The video is one minute and 25 seconds long and the time it was taken is unknown. It has not been determined exactly how far the fishing vessel was then able to travel before it stopped.

Another video of the final rescue phase taken by ‘Lucky Sailor’ and released in the past few days shows the fishing vessel stopped sailing, its engine appears to be out of order and the weather conditions are good.

Possibly in the intervening time – “K” does not know how much time was between the two different phases – the operator of the fishing boat realized that the tanker intended to offer them assistance and stopped. The tanker did not proceed too close so as not to cause ripples and endanger the stability of the fishing vessel. His crew flung down a rope to which they had tied barrels of supplies. The people on board the fishing boat pulled it over to get help.

Survivors of the fatal shipwreck have described in their statements that the fishing boat’s engine was constantly breaking down during the multi-day journey and that there were occasional attempts to repair it. “All the days of the voyage the boat was leaning on both sides, from the many persons in it. There were about 400 people on the boat below, almost all Pakistanis, and another 250 or so above, people of Syrian and Egyptian nationality. We traveled for about five days and all these days the boat’s engine broke down. We were repairing it and continuing,” testified one of the survivors of the shipwreck. “On the fourth day, the machine broke down several times. I realized this because the boat stopped moving and I could hear from the noise that they were repairing it,” another survivor from Pakistan said in his testimony. “We were too many people for such a ship, the ship was old and rusty, there were no life jackets, the engine kept breaking down,” testified another survivor. “There was a person repairing the boat’s engine, but it kept breaking down,” said another passenger on the fishing boat who lost his wife and children in the wreck.

The Lucky Sailor, managed by Eastern Mediterranean Maritime, was empty of cargo and traveling to Italy. From the first visual contact he had with the fishing vessel to the provision of assistance and its release to continue its course, approximately 3.5 hours elapsed. Another tanker followed to supply other supplies to the fishing vessel and later the Coast Guard vessel 920 sailed there. The two available spots submitted to the docket, the original spot where Coast Guard vessel 920 was headed at 3:00 p.m. on June 13 to locate the fishing vessel, and the spot where the vessel was reported sunk in the early hours of June 14 , not many nautical miles apart.

In today’s statement, the Coast Guard stated that “from the moment the process of providing food supplies was completed until it was immobilized due to mechanical failure, the A/K vessel traveled a distance of about 6 nautical miles”.