Many of the 137 people who were on board the ill-fated Gal Constructor barge ship and were rescued said they had given up hope of escaping alive and “stared at death” as their barge nearly hit an oil rig. Some even called their families to say their final goodbyes.
The four-deck Gal Constructor, an accommodation barge catering to OGC, anchored offshore near Alibaug on Sunday night started drifting several nautical miles till Satpati in Palghar and got stranded there in wee hours of Tuesday.
Anand Menon, 45, deck foreman of Gal constructor, who has been on barges since 1994, said, “I have seen several cyclones while on ships but all of them passed in two to four hours.
