A calm day, then a beastly storm

From the sheltered beach at Sanur, it seemed like a calm day, Josie says. The weather was cloudy, but not windy. This changed through the morning.

Ngurah Komang, a tour boat leader who was in the same stretch of water with a group several hours after the Sea Dragon 2, captured a beastly storm pummelling a patch of not-too-distant ocean.

The cloud he filmed joined the sky and sea into a single, mushroom-like mass. “This is a natural phenomenon,” Ngurah said into the video. “A rare occurrence.”

He changed the day’s itinerary to avoid the weather.

Even with the waves building, the Sea Dragon 2 crew continued.

The Americans do not recall a safety briefing, only some words from the crew or guides about where they were going and what they were going to see. And the engine was so loud, they say, that they could barely make out a word.

Australian marine safety trainer Adam Sontag, who reviewed video footage, said the first red flag was that no one appeared to be wearing a life jacket. Except for one person: a seven-year-old Estonian girl. Her mother claims to have asked the crew for a life-jacket five times before having to find one herself.

Some of the passengers asked the crew to slow down. Holly, increasingly worried, moved from the seat next to Josie to be closer to the captain, where she presumed it was safer.

Depending on the account, the wave hit about 15 to 30 minutes into the journey to Nusa Penida.

“We kind of felt the boat get sucked into the undertow of that really big wave, and the wave itself was probably bigger than the boat, if not twice the size of the boat when we were at the base of it,” Josie says.

“I’ve never had a wave that big break right on top of a boat like that.”

It is unclear if it was a rogue wave or one in a pattern. The weather alert for Nusa Penida that day was yellow, indicating waves of 1.25 to 2.5 metres. The upper end of this range can be enough to turn experienced fishermen back to shore.

“From what I can see, the vessel was travelling beam-on [side-on] to the waves – this is an extremely dangerous position and a common cause of capsizing in heavy seas,” Sontag says. “When confronted with large waves … the safest course of action is generally to turn the bow into the wave to avoid being rolled.”

Josie recalls pulling herself closer to the boat, holding her breath and waiting.

“When I felt the boat fully capsize, I saw dark blue and light blue,” she says. “I waited for the boat to settle, and then I just swam towards the light blue.

Others, including Holly, were trapped under the boat, the limited air available fouled with fumes.

“I was by the [Australian couple Gabe and Tam], who got burned severely,” Holly says. “I was panicking, and he had told her, ‘We have to swim out, or we’re going to lose oxygen’. I was feeling really, really dizzy, so thank God I was by him.

“That’s the only reason why I knew to swim out from under the boat … because you just can’t think straight.”

Unknown to Holly, Anna Blight and the Estonian girl were also under the boat. Later in hospital, the child would lament Blight’s death to her mother: “I keep seeing the lady that died. I should have been able to save her. I should have been able to save the lady that died.”

The investigation

This masthead has spoken to five of the 10 surviving passengers. At the time of writing, investigators had spoken to none. Some passengers have since returned to their home countries.

Police have interviewed the captain and crew and maintain the Sea Dragon 2’s engine was knocked out by a floating log, leaving the vessel powerless and vulnerable to the waves.

The video tells a different story. Josie confirms the boat was moving at speed when it was hit by a single, large wave that caused it to flip “instantly”.

The extraordinary footage of the wave and its aftermath was filmed by Dutch woman Eva Jongbloed, first to prove to friends how wild the journey was and, after the boat capsized, to document the ordeal for investigators and insurance companies.

Jongbloed, who was with her niece Daniela Faber on the boat, was filming as the wave washed her into the ocean.

“I thought I was the only one who fell off the boat,” she says. “And I was thinking: ‘Oh shit, how are they going to get me’ … but then I turned around and I saw the whole boat was flipped.”

This masthead has shown Nusa Penida investigators the video, which by then was public. They had not seen it. The boss of those investigators later promised to “take it into account” and “cross-check with the boat captain and crew”.

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This masthead has also offered to put police in touch with the Americans and others for interviews. They are yet to take it up.

About half an hour, possibly more, after the incident, another boat arrived to rescue the first load of survivors, but here, too, there is conjecture.

Police say it was Sea Dragon’s other boat that had returned after radio communication from the stricken crew. The Americans, however, say the Sea Dragon 2 appeared to have no working radio, emergency beacon or even a safety protocol. Passengers believe their rescuers were in a private boat, passing by chance.

The tour company, which has been assisting survivors with hospital costs and retrieving goods, has not commented, making the truth difficult to verify.

The first group of rescued survivors, now with life jackets, were dropped off in rough surf about 50 to 100 metres from Kelingking beach and told to swim to shore so the boat could go back to the scene and get the rest.

They expected to be met by ambulances and paramedics at the beach. Instead, they found only unaware locals, beachgoers and construction workers.

Even once the builders had escorted them to the top of the towering cliff using a half-built elevator, no help was there.

If there were radio communications, how could this be?

Most survivors suffered chemical burns and blunt force bruising. They also swallowed fuel-laced seawater. The little Estonian girl spent days in intensive care.

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It is unclear how Anna Blight died, or whether she could have been saved. While passengers were unaware of her death until hours later, some, reflecting on the chain of events, now wonder whether she could have been pulled from underneath the boat and given CPR.

“[The crew] were clearly just young guys on a boat,” Josie says. “We won’t know until there’s an autopsy if there was serious head trauma [and she couldn’t be saved].”

According to Nusa Penida police, however, the family has declined an autopsy.

The Americans plan to stay in Bali for the rest of their planned holiday. They do not want the tragedy to define their memories of beautiful places and kind people.

“The reason we wanted to do this interview is, hopefully, from this experience, the Balinese companies that run these tours will invest properly in safety.”

When this masthead visited the Sanur port this week, the tragedy hadn’t appeared to dent tourists’ appetite for the Nusa Penida boats. The busy season begins next month.

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