MARITIME MATTERS:

Mystery surrounds the identity of a man caught on surveillance video towing what appears to be an unseaworthy boat from Bass Strait into Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay early today.

Video captured just after dawn this morning by a camera belonging to the Queenscliff-based branch of the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard (AVCG) (main picture) showed the man making slow headway against waves as he entered the bay.

“The camera we have stationed on the eastern side of the entrance at Fort Nepean caught vision of the man as he struggled to very slowly tow the boat by a rope between his teeth without any visible assistance,” a spokesperson for the Queenscliff AVCG said.

“Our CCTV vision is a bit blurry so it’s difficult to get a really good look at him,.

“The mystery man does appear to be releasing the rope regularly just long enough to shout what a local lip reader tells us is ‘NO!’, perhaps as a way for him to maintain his stroke rate and pace.

“We are continuing to monitor his progress and he appears to be set on an east north-east course.

“By our calculations if he keeps to that heading he will be just offshore at somewhere like Mount Eliza, Frankston, or Seaforth by just before 8am on Saturday morning.

“He should be quite visible from land, and certainly he’ll be able to be seen by anyone along the Nepean Highway,” the AVCG representative said.”

A spokesperson for Australian Border Force said the agency was aware of the incident and was being kept informed by the local Coast Guard.

“But as you know, under Operation Sovereign Borders we don’t comment about on-water matters,” the spokesperson said.

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