In a large-scale search east of the island of Rügen, the sea rescuers from the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service (DGzRS) On Thursday evening, 15 March 2012, two men from Hamburg were found who had strayed far out into the Baltic Sea on a chartered houseboat. The rescue cruiser "Eugen" from the Greifswalder Oie station brought the ship and crew out of the danger zone of a major shipping lane in the dark and into the safe harbour of the small Baltic island in the Pomeranian Bay.
At around 6.30 p.m., the two men, aged between 60 and 70, contacted the Bremen Maritime Rescue Service of the DGzRS by mobile phone. They had wanted to take the nine-metre-long houseboat "Jasmund", a steel displacement vessel of the "Kormoran" type, on a ferry trip from Zeuthen in Brandenburg to Stralsund. They had set sail from Wolgast at around midday and had apparently neglected to turn westwards into the Greifswald Bodden at the end of the Peenestrom buoyage.
The two said that they had been sailing around the open Baltic Sea for more than six hours, disorientated. The GPS device had failed and they were gradually becoming worried because they were running out of fuel. They were only able to provide three specific details: they had passed a small island some time ago, they could now see large ferries on the horizon and the depth sounder reported a water depth of 13.5 metres.
With this scant information, the Bremen Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre alerted the rescue cruisers "Eugen" and "Wilhelm Kaisen" from Sassnitz as well as the rescue boat "Hecht" from Zinnowitz, which was on a patrol trip off Usedom with its volunteer crew.
The Bremen Rescue Radio coastal radio station sent an emergency message (Pan-Pan) to all shipping. The DGzRS also deployed the "Arkona" (multi-purpose vessel of the Waterways and Shipping Administration) and the "Bredstedt" (Federal Police) to support the search. Bremen Rescue also asked the ferries "Galileusz" (en route from Trelleborg/Sweden to Świnoujście/Poland) and "Wolin" (en route from Świnoujście to Trelleborg) as well as the Swedish push boat "Karl Erik" (en route on a similar course) to keep an eye out for the houseboat.
The almost glassy sea made the radar search easier. First of all, the rescue cruiser "Eugen" and the nearby "Arkona" approached several radar echoes around the Greifswalder Oie. By telephone, the sea rescuers asked the houseboat crew to fire red rockets - an international distress signal. This helped: at around 7.45 p.m., the "Eugen" found the houseboat - just under twelve nautical miles (around 22 kilometres) north-east of Greifswalder Oie and therefore around 45 nautical miles (85 kilometres) from the planned destination of Stralsund.
Together with the rescue boat "Hecht", the rescue cruiser secured the "Jasmund" and brought it to Greifswalder Oie in a journey lasting around two hours, the last hour and a half of which was spent in tow due to the lack of fuel. The sea rescuers and the visibly relieved houseboaters moored there at around 10 pm.
