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8 Cuban Salt Traders Rescued, 3 Missing After “Helga” Capsizes
posted (March 21, 2011)
At last light this evening, the Coast Guard stopped today's search for three Cuban men missing at sea after a disaster beyond the reef….

Captain Arturo Edrei Garcia, Nelson Perez Ardao and Alexis Gonzalez Cune were three of 11 men aboard the 220 foot cargo vessel named Helga on Sunday morning at 1:00 am. They were transporting a cargo of salt from Coloradas, Mexico to Puerto Cortez Honduras, a route they often travel.

But on Sunday morning, the sea was very rough; and they were outside the reef where the vessel was tossed about by 8 foot swells. The Captain and crew came up with a plan to try and get to Turneffe and hide behind that island, but the boat started to take on water and keeled dangerously. They then decided to head straight for the nearest land, or the reef, but that's when the vessel toppled onto its side and they jumped off, with the engine running.

Now the water out in the blue can be as deep as a thousand feet, and at one in the morning in the throes of a squall, eight of them made it to a safety vessel.

The Coast guard got the distress call minutes before:..

Lt. Gregory Soberanis, Operations Officer BNCG
"Approximately 11:30 pm Saturday night, a coast guard operation cell received a distress call from a vessel Helga - that it was in distress and it was rapidly taking in water and we immediately deployed our patrol station in San Pedro because we knew the position of the vessel - it was approximately 4 nautical miles east of Caye Caulker. We also know that there were 11 crew members on board. The sea condition at the time was very rough; a small craft warning was out at the time. Our initial deployment from San Pedro - our patrol found the first 4 crew members aboard a small life raft that is right here next to me. Thereafter a second search unit was deployed from this location to support the search efforts in that area. The first set of 4 was found at approximately 1:10 that morning. The search efforts continued throughout the night and a second set of 4 was found approximately found at 7:30 that morning in a second life raft. They were obviously dehydrated, hyperthermia was setting in for them, they were shivering due to the weather conditions. The life raft was severely beaten and battered and they were adrift close to the reef. So we caught them just in time. We were informed by the individuals that there were 3 others who were unable to make it into the life raft, however they were wearing their life jackets at the time. But those are the 3 individuals that are accounted for still missing that we are currently searching for at this time. As it relates to the search efforts, the coast guard has two assets out there currently doing surface searches along with another vessel from the Caye Caulker emergency center. So far we've seen a lot of debris from the ship. The ship was a Panamanian flag ship flying the Panama flag. We were inform that it was coming from Mexico en-route to Honduras. It was transporting salt - it was a cargo vessel - 220 feet long so it was sizeable vessel. However the call we received that night - the captain definitely - you can hear the sound in his voice that the ship was rapidly taking in water so every effort is being made at this time to try to locate the 3 missing individuals."

The search will resume tomorrow morning and if nothing is found, may have to be called off tomorrow evening. The coast guard is supported by the BDF airwing which ahs been doing aerial searches.

To be clear, the 11 are not Cuban boat people or refugees; their documents are in order and they are salt traders. The survivors are:

Iraelio Mengana Garcia, 47yrs; Armando Garnado Martinez, 47yrs; Antonio Perez Sadez, 37yrs; Humberto Iglesias Hernandez, 49yrs; Alfredo Porta Martinez, 43yrs; Jose Consta Nalia, 46yrs; George Herrera Aldana, 38yrs; Joaquin Ruiz De Zarate Arribas, 39yrs.

There is another slightly less dramatic but equally important case of a man who had gone missing at sea but washed up alive on northern caye caulker. 55 year old American National Jack Burnette reported to police that he along with 3 other men - namely - Kenneth Cox, Gary Paumgargmar and Eric Resse - went diving about one mile north of Caye Caulker around 1 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. 40 minutes later, the men went back to their boat and that was when they realized that Eric Resse was nowhere to be found. But things ended on a good note - because on Sunday afternoon around 12 midday, Resse visited the Caye Caulker police station where he told police that he was rescued from the mangroves across from the split in the village.

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