Two fishermen whose day boat ran out of fuel and drifted in the northern seas off Mannar were rescued in the early hours of Monday, the Sri Lanka Navy said.
The pair left the Gurunagar Fishing Harbour in Jaffna on Saturday 19 September aboard the day fishing vessel “IDAY – A – 0126 JFN” and did not return. The Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Colombo, which began a search.
How they were found
MRCC Colombo alerted both the Northern and North Central Naval Commands, and also instructed fisheries officials to pass word to local fishing boats working the area — enlisting the fishing fleet itself in the search, a detail Hiru News does not carry.
The vessel was located drifting disabled, without fuel, in the seas north of Talaimannar. The Navy rescued both crew, towed the boat back to Talaimannar and provided humanitarian assistance, according to the Navy’s own account.
The photograph issued with the statement shows the operation took place in darkness, with the fishermen using head torches and a Navy boat crew rigging a tow line. Both men are visible standing aboard the vessel, apparently unhurt, and the sea around them is flat.
Roughly a day and a half adrift
The boat is described by the Navy as a one-day fishing trawler — a vessel provisioned to return the same day. It left on Saturday and was recovered in what the Navy calls “the wee hours” of Monday, putting the pair at sea for well over a day beyond the trip they had set out on, without fuel for part of it.
A note on the date: Hiru reports the rescue as having happened “yesterday (21)”, which is internally inconsistent — 21 September is Monday, the day of filing. The Navy’s own release dates the rescue to the early hours of Monday 21 September, and that is the account followed here.
The rescue ran in parallel with the Navy’s deployment of disaster relief teams in the south-west, where 171 teams are on standby for flooding — maritime search in the north and inland flood relief in the south on the same morning.
Not reported
Neither account names or gives the ages of the two fishermen, says why the boat ran out of fuel, states how far it drifted, or says whether it carried a radio or distress beacon. Neither says what condition the men were in, whether they had water or food aboard, or whether the vessel was handed back to its owner.
