SOLOMON Islands Maritime Safety Administration will investigate a sea incident involving MV Victory’s which occurred over the weekend at Uhu in West Are’are.

The boat took a commercial trip from Honiara via Uhu to other ports in East Are’are when the boat ran aground on a reef at Uhu on Saturday night.

Officer in charge of Operation Safe Boat – 2016 from SIMSA office, Mr Derek Saru told this paper yesterday his office is currently aware of the incident, and are waiting for the arrival of the boat to start with the investigation.

He said since the incident, his office is gathering information surrounding the wreckage of the boat.

Adding that based on information received, his office will deal with the shipmaster and the ship owner as part of their investigation.

Mr Saru said the trip was supposed to have been taken on Friday 23rd, but was detained by the operation due to overloading of the ship.

He said the problem was solved the next day after the owner of MV Victory and owner of MV Haura decided to share the loading.

“So upon that resolution we accept the dialogue made and allow the two boats to sail on the same voyage after marine’s final check on two boats.

“The two boats set out in the afternoon of Saturday 24th, and it was during the night of that day MV Victory encountered the sea incident,” Saru said.

He said that upon information received on the incident, the ship run aground a reef at Uhu.

Mr Saru after receiving the information, his office made numbers of attempt to talk with the shipmaster but not response.

Adding that the shipmaster also failed to give information to marine on the incident.

He said that according to the information received the boat was stuck on the reef and was only enabled to be removed when high tide assisted the crews’ attempts to free it.

Mr Saru said no casualty or death of anyone onboard the ship during that time was registered, thus the boat will be checked for its seaworthiness after the incident.

However, this incident is the second sea incident to encounter during this year’s Operation Safe Boat after MV Tafusibata also experienced same kind of incident couple of weeks ago.