British patrol vessel "escaped" port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife due to lack of supervision
Original Source: Cadenaser by Pedro Murillo [Spanish Language]
The detained British patrol vessel, Defender, fled Tenerife port early Friday
The Canary Islands Government Delegate, Maria del Carmen Hernandez of Bento, acknowledged that the patrol vessel, which fled on Friday night in the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, "escaped" through the lack of operative monitoring.
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In this sense, Bento downplayed the incident and said "it is true that the ship escaped but was detained by an administrative penalty and nothing more and did not violate a security risk".
The vessel was immobilized last April when she arrived at the port of Los Cristianos with technical problems.
During the ship inspections, the port authority found numerous irregularities in the documentation of the crew and the safety of life at sea (SOLAS) so it was decided to retain the ship which was escorted by the Spanish Navy patrol ship, Tornado, to the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where he remained until last night when he fled.
The Defender, right, is a 127ft boat, which weighs 135 tons, was built in Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK was built in the mid-Seventies as a fast attack craft for the Sultan of Oman’s navy in the Gulf. It is sailing under the British flag and is owned by an ex-officer of the Royal Navy, Chris Enmarsh.
The service provided by the Defender is to give support and protection to the oil rigs located in the Gulf of Guinea against piratical attacks. For this purpose, the Defender has all its weapons with two guns of 20 and 40 mm and placements for machine guns.
But Mr Enmarch, of Penryn, Cornwall, said the Spanish authorities had made a 'fuss about nothing' and said the cannons on his boat were 'just for show and totally unusable'.
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