Rescue at sea is regulated by two texts. One is from 1974, called SOLAS, an acronym in English for the International Convention for the Safety of Human Life at Sea. On the other hand, there is another from 1982. It is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Its article 98 establishes that each state will require the captain of a ship flying its flag to ensure that, to the extent As possible and without serious risk to the ship, crew or passengers, help anyone in distress at sea and assist those in distress as soon as possible if you are told they need help.
And so it has been this morning: the Mayan Queen, which flies the flag of the Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory, has assisted the castaways who were sailing in an old fishing boat that capsized last night to the southwest of the Peloponnese peninsula, in Greece. They traveled from eastern Libya to some point in southern Europe in search of a better life. Although the number of people traveling aboard the fishing boat is not known, 79 bodies have already been recovered and the Mayan Queen has been able to transfer a hundred survivors to Kalamata, a city of 55,000 inhabitants and the most important port in the region. While in the area of the shipwreck, several Greek patrol boats, a frigate and other aerial means continue to carry out an operation to locate more bodies, without much hope of finding more survivors.
Even bearing the flag of a British overseas territory, the Mayan Queen is Mexican property and currently belongs to Alejandro Baillères, son of magnate Alberto Baillères González, who died in 2022. At one time, his was the second largest fortune in Mexico, second only to Carlos Slim. Currently, the Baillères family holds the fourth position according to the latest update of the famous Forbes list, in which Ricardo Salinas and German Larrea have surpassed the owners of the BAL group, a conglomerate of companies that touches interests as disparate as education, insurance, department stores or silver, lead and zinc mining.
The yacht that took the shipwrecked to the port of Kalamata was ordered by Alberto Baillères from the German shipyard Blohm Voss, who delivered it to him 15 years ago. The ship, 93 meters long, had a cost of 175 million euros, the budget for annual maintenance is around 10% of that amount. Many times her annual grounding for repairs is done at Marina MB92, the shipyard specializing in superyachts.
The design of the boat was entrusted to Tim Heywood, one of the stars of the sector and the interior was the work of Terence Disdale, to whom Roman Abramovich has commissioned the interior decoration and distribution of all his boats. In the case of the Mexican businessman, he ordered space for 16 passengers in eight large cabins and suites, while the 24 crew are distributed in a dozen cabins on the different decks of the yacht. At the top is the owner's suite, with a terrace completely separated from the rest of the occupants and both on the sides and at the stern, the name Mayan Queen appears in silver letters, because it was not for nothing that Baillères father was known as 'the king de la plata' for his mining operations, already inherited from his father.
A large B from the initial of the family name of the saga, also appears both to port and to starboard in the highest part of the superyacht. A third B is on the bow, painted over the helicopter landing zone of a luxury ship converted into a singular rescue ship for a day, as it was the largest capacity ship that sailed in the vicinity of the shipwreck in the early morning of this Tuesday to Wednesday.
