It was just after 11:00 PM on Thursday, August 10. The Moby passenger ferry Sharden left Olbia's Isola Bianca port at 10:20 PM, bound for Livorno. A few miles off the coast of Golfo Aranci, in the waters near the islet of Capo Figari, a passenger who was on the ship's outer deck with other passengers raised the alarm with the Port Authority. Olbia: the ferry had hit a fishing boat.
Alerted by the call for intervention, the Coast Guard soldiers arrive at the reported point. In front of them only what remains of the small fishing boat, the Alemax II. Its commander, Mario Langiu, 28 years old from Golfo Aranci, thrown into the water, is rescued by a sailboat that was sailing nearby. The man, miraculously escaped unharmed from the collision, manages to cling to a floating piece of his boat, managing to explode a signal rocket that allows him to be immediately identified.
Meanwhile, the Moby interrupts its navigation, resuming only after the green light from the Coast Guard around 2.30:41: this morning the arrival in Livoro. On board the Alemax II there is also another XNUMX-year-old man, originally from Senegal, who has been on board the fishing boat for some time: the sailor is still missing. According to an initial reconstruction by Langiu, shortly before the collision his assistant was below deck preparing a coffee and thus facing the night of work that the two had ahead of them. Only a few minutes pass and the impact occurs.
“It was a sudden collision,” the commander reconstructs with the men of the coast guard from his bed in the hospital in Olbia where he is being treated only for checks. “I only had time to see the ship hit the fishing boat from the bow, which disintegrated before my eyes.” It is likely that the sailor was trapped inside the hull, and dragged to the bottom with it. The search was interrupted today at sunset: three Coast Guard vessels, a tugboat and an Air Force helicopter were involved.
The Public Prosecutor's Office of Tempio Pausania has meanwhile opened an investigation file against unknown persons for the moment. Dismay in the coastal town of Golfo Aranci where they await and hope for a positive outcome to this affair. "As a community we are very apprehensive about what happened - comments Mayor Mario Mulas - We have already suffered losses at sea and we trust in a happy ending to this accident". In fact, in December 2022, a fishing boat leaving from Golfo Aranci ended up on the rocks of the island of Bisce, between Caprera and Porto Cervo: two men lost their lives in the impact, Tommy Di Chello, owner of a gardening company in Golfo Aranci, and Giacomo Botte, from Naples; two others were seriously injured.
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