The two men who were on the sinking pleasure boat on the Maas near Oijen on Saturday afternoon, barely survived the collision with a cargo ship. One of the men, Rachid, got stuck in the water and for a moment thought he wouldn’t survive. “The emergency services were only there when they had already saved themselves,” says Agnes van der Meer, Rachid’s mother. According to Agnes, her son is not to blame for the collision and that is why she is looking for witnesses.
On Saturday afternoon, Rachid (42) and Karym (35), Agnes’s son and son-in-law, will perform music across the Maas. They were on a brand new boat, a cruiser over nine meters long, which Agnes and her sister had bought that day for 17,000 euros. The men would sail the cruiser to their residence in Rijnsburg, while Agnes and her sister drove back home. “The boat was perfect. The previous owner had worked hard on it for seven months. That’s all gone now,” says Agnes.
Three quarters of an hour after the purchase it went wrong. At Oijen, Rachid and Karym collided with a freighter and the cruiser sank. “It was very quiet on the water, there were only a few sailing boats and a canoe. Rachid and Karym sailed to the right. They had not heard or seen the 80-meter long container ship coming at all. It came from behind,” says Agnes. She speaks on behalf of her son and son-in-law, who she says are still in shock.
“They looked behind them and then it went black. The cruiser immediately capsized.” According to Agnes, Karym could jump off the boat, but her son Rachid couldn’t. “He got stuck in the boat. He can’t remember what because he was completely disoriented. He couldn’t breathe and thought that was the end of the story.” Fortunately, her son managed to free himself and surface. “He doesn’t even remember how, but he did it.”
The men climbed onto the rubber boat that hung behind the boat. Meanwhile, a woman standing on the freighter had thrown out a ladder. “She yelled for them to paddle to her and helped them on the boat. From there my son called us, we were still on our way home and immediately turned around.”
“The first thing they had to do was take a breathalyzer.”
Rachid and Karym were not seriously injured, but they are not doing well on Sunday. “They’ve had nightmares all night. My son in particular has been terrified. The images keep repeating in his head. He also has a lump on his head, pain in his chest and pain in his knees, but he can don’t remember much.”
Emergency services rushed out en masse after the collision was reported. They arrived when the men were already safe and sound on the container ship. Agnes is disappointed with the way the emergency services treated her son and son-in-law. “They were hypothermic and were given an insulation blanket. But the first thing they had to do after that was a breathalyzer test. It was negative, because they had not been drinking. Rachid and Karym were immediately suspects, while they did nothing wrong,” she says. .
“It’s going to be a fight over who’s to blame.”
Police are still investigating exactly how the collision happened. In any case, the family believes that it was not the fault of the two men, but of the skipper of the container ship. That’s why Agnes is looking for people who saw the collision. “Otherwise it will be a fight over who is to blame. Hopefully there were people around on Saturday afternoon who saw something happen.”
Images from after the collision Saturday afternoon:
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