Bad weather hinders salvage of Indonesian ship in Australia

JAKARTA (AFP) - Bad weather has delayed the salvage of an Indonesian navy sailing vessel that ran aground on an Australian beach en route to Sydney, a foreign ministry official said Friday.

Wild weather along Australia's eastern coast drove ashore the KRI Arung Samudera, a 35-metre (114-foot) schooner, on Thursday. The 18 naval officers on board were found wet and shivering in lifejackets on a road north of Brisbane.

"Heavy rains and high waves have been preventing salvage efforts... (but) all 18 ship crew are safe," foreign ministry spokesman Desra Percaya told reporters in Jakarta.

The ship had been sailing from Darwin down the east coast to Brisbane, with the last port of call in Sydney to join six other tall ships in a show at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit early next month.

"A quarantine team have arrived at Rainbow Beach to meet the ship crew and examine them and from the latest information we received, they are all well," Percaya said.

"Two staff from the embassy in Canberra have left to get to the location to assist them should the men need any help."

The ship crew were staying at a local police station while awaiting a navy contingent to pick them up, he added.

The three-masted Arung Samudera, built as a fast and luxurious sailing yacht in New Zealand, was commissioned into the Indonesian navy as a training ship in 1996.