All six children and a man were rescued to safety after more than three hours of staying afloat in the waters since their motorized banca from Bohol capsized some three nautical miles west of Cordova in Mactan Island yesterday morning.
A passing motor tanker, MT Maginoo, which was carrying bunker fuel from Bataan to the Ludo wharf in barangay Pasil, Cebu City rescued the seven people and brought them to the Ludo pier.
MT Maginoo is owned by Herma Shipping and Transport Corporation based in Quezon City.
From the Ludo wharf, a rubber raft of the Coast Guard’s BRP Batangas vessel fetched and took the survivors to a wharf behind the Malacañang sa Sugbo.
Captain Rolando Legazpi, deputy commander of the Central Eastern Visayas Coast Guard District, said they then facilitated the return of the children-survivors, aged 11 to 15, to Cuaming Island of Inabangga town in Bohol hours after their rescue.
The lone elder survivor, Arnold Saldua, as of yesterday afternoon chose to remain in Cebu to find ways of bringing back the ill-fated banca to Cuaming.
Saldua said they sailed off Cuaming supposedly to fetch his nephew in Cordova who earlier texted him about the wedding of his (Saldua) son at 10am yesterday.
When the banca M/B Jay Paul crossed the channel off Cordova, at around 7 a.m., big waves caught and turned it upside down. Saldua said he and the six children clung on to the keel of the capsized banca and waited until the motor tanker came. — Fred P. Languido/RAE