Teen among 2 fishermen missing; boat found with cellphone

Two fishermen have been reported missing after the boat in which they were travelling was discovered abandoned on the beach at Tain Settlement along the Corentyne Coast, (Region 6: East Berbice-Corentyne) on Wednesday.

Visual Parmanand, 17, and Daniel Inchanally, 32, both residents of Cotton Tree village, West Coast Berbice (Region 5: Mahaica-Berbice), had reportedly left home to go to Crabwood Creek, Corentyne to pick up the boat and sail it back to their village. They left Crabwood Creek at around 15:30h on Monday, and were expected to sail along Guyana’s Atlantic Coast to the estuary of the Berbice River, where they were to moor the boat at the Three-Door landing site at D’Edward village (WCB).

Mahindranauth Parmanand, father of the teen, has said the duo was expected to arrive at the landing site at around 19:30h, but they never did. According to Parmanand, the boat is a new one he had made, and his son and one of his workers had helped him to lower it into the water at Crabwood Creek before he left and drove home.
“When I reach home at 5:30 [17:30h] I start call them to know how far they at, and I didn’t get a response; the phone just ringing out,” Parmanand, who owns two other fishing boats, said.

He said he waited at the landing site until 22:00h before deciding to go home.
At 02:00h on Wednesday, another son reported to him that the boat did not arrive.
“We wait until the place get bright, and me and my next son, we take a boat and come out, and we drive and go till by Whim, and then I call the phone again, and a man answered it and say that he find this boat at Tain. He hear the phone ringing inside the bag and he pick up the phone and he answer. He say like the boat run to shore and the engine in gear and everything is there, but no workmen…,” Parmanand detailed.
He said that when he arrived at Tain, he found the boat intact, with no marks on it to suggest that it might have come into contact with something. The boat was equipped with a 60hp engine.
Parmanand said he reported the matter to the Whim Police Station, but up to Wednesday evening, the police had not visited the scene.
He said police officers were reluctant to venture to the sea shore, claiming that the distance was too far, and instead met him in the housing area about one mile from where the boat was found.

“We called the Coast Guard and they say that they will not be able to render any assistance now, because they are on an operation up the Berbice River,” he added.
Up to press time there was no other response from the Coast Guard.
Parmanand, who has been a fisherman for the past 18 years, has said that both his son and Inchanally know how to swim. However, Inchanally’s father is of the view that those skills are of no use in rough waters.
Narine Ramsammy Sundar, a fisherman for 45 years, has said he has experienced rough waters, and during his search for his son on Wednesday, he experienced rough waters in the ocean.
“The wave was very big, and we turn back the boat because we can’t go out there with the boat…Out here you can’t swim, don’t let nobody fool you. You gon be able to swim a little bit, but the waves so big, where would you swim and go? You can’t swim; only if you get life jacket it could save you, and they didn’t have life jacket – it was a new brand boat and new brand everything. Me feel that they drowned and dead,” the father of three has said, while adding that he is of the belief that the fishermen would not have been able to survive.
Sundar, who has been going to sea since he was 11, has also suggested that Parmanand might have fallen overboard and Inchanally might have tried to save him, but was also pulled into the water.
“I feel that they were [videoing] while they were driving, I don’t know if the wave knock the lil boy out of the boat and my son try to save him. If you videoing and the boat rock, you can fall overboard,” he explained.
When the Parmanand’s phone was retrieved and unlocked, it revealed that he had been making videos of their journey from Crabwood Creek.
Meanwhile, the search for these missing persons continues.