Indonesian Navy questioning 65 foreigners on ship that strayed into Indonesian waters

Harmless trial of a boat or something else? The mystery is here:

Indonesian navy officers on Thursday were questioning 65 foreigners on board a Singapore-flagged ship that allegedly strayed into Indonesian waters, a navy spokesman said.

"We going through all the information, including from immigration and intelligence sources, and will need two or three days to complete the probe," said First Admiral Maliti Yusuf.

The 20-meter (65-foot) vessel, Bordon Aladin, was caught on Wednesday at anchor off Nipah Island in the Malacca Strait about 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Singapore.

The passengers and crew are from France, Norway, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, the Philippines and Singapore. They have told authorities they were testing the boat, which was newly built.

65 people on a 65 foot boat? Hmm.

Update: Here's a photo of a 65' boat (seems to have seen better days). The US Navy has a 65-foot patrol boat that carries a crew of 4.



Update2: The owner of the boat has been identified as "Singapore's Keppel Corp."

Keppel Offshore & Marine (Keppel O&M) combines the expertise and experience of Keppel FELS and Keppel Shipyard (formerly Keppel Hitachi Zosen), making it the largest rig-building and marine group in the region.

With its strong design and engineering capabilities, Keppel is a total solutions provider and partner to customers, participating in their design and planning of a wide range of rigs and vessels.

Keppel is the world leader in the building of harsh environment jack-up rigs, having built most of the world's jack-ups on order in the last decade. It designs, builds and repairs the complete range of mobile offshore drilling units, floating production systems, production topsides and specialised vessels such as deepwater semi-submersibles, tension leg platforms and other highly sophisticated offshore vessels.

In the marine business, Keppel is the undisputed leader in the conversion of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels and Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) vessels, and has the expertise in the whole spectrum of repair, conversion and building of a diverse range and capacity of vessels.

Keppel is poised to strengthen its global leadership through its strategic global network of 16 yards and more than 10 support operations, excellent track record of on time and on budget deliveries, advanced proprietary designs, and its compliance with stringent safety standards.(source)

But they better learn to keep their boats under control.

update3: Keppel as offshore support vessel builder Shipyard: and a sample boat (60 meters long)