Fair winds save ship and animals

Unseasonal winds helped save a vessel with around 2 500 animals on board when it lost a rudder off the Wild Coast recently. The 74-metre vessel had loaded 640 cattle, 300 sheep and 1 400 goats from a Berlin farm in the East London harbour earlier this month. It lost its rudder off Kei Mouth and drifted down past the Port of East London to Hamburg where it was taken in tow by harbour tugs, according to National Ports Authority spokesperson Terry Taylor. “Fortunately we had southwesterly winds which kept her offshore. At this time of year we start getting the easterlies, and they would have blown her onto the rocks,” he says. All the animals were offloaded safely and taken back to the farm where they awaited repairs to the vessel or a new charter, according to Taylor.