At 21:18 on 19 September, the 23-metre (75-foot) ferry Ilha do Farol reported that its engines had stopped in rough water about 36 kilometres (22 miles) off Peniche. From the maritime rescue control room at Algés, west of Lisbon, radio operator Maria Achleitner kept the crew on the line and directed a naval rescue vessel towards them. All 23 people aboard were brought ashore; nobody was injured.
The 56-year-old civil servant has since become an unlikely face in Portugal’s debate over how to organise rescue services along its long Atlantic coast. A parliamentary committee will hear on Monday about a proposal for three regional radio relay desks. Achleitner helped draw up the plan, a detail not widely known until colleagues described her work after the rescue.
The call from Peniche
The ferry’s crew reported a failure in its propulsion system and gave their position, but strong winds were pushing the vessel away from the coast. Achleitner, who had worked at the control centre for 18 years, asked the crew to repeat their coordinates and relayed updates to the naval rescue team. Waves were about 3 metres (10 feet) high, according to the maritime authority’s published incident timeline.
She remained on the radio for 47 minutes, tracking the rescue vessel’s approach and passing instructions between its crew and the ferry. “You do not think about being brave. You keep the information clear, because every minute has a job,” Achleitner said in an interview at Algés. The ferry was taken under tow and reached Peniche shortly before midnight.
Passenger Doreen Weber, 63, said the crew had asked everyone to stay seated while the rescue vessel came alongside. “Maria’s voice was the one steady thing we could hear,” she said. For Achleitner, the call was also a reminder of the limits of a system in which one Lisbon room handles alerts from Portugal’s coast and islands.
A plan years in the making
The unexpected detail in Achleitner’s career is that she helped draft the regional relay proposal now due for parliamentary scrutiny. After recording repeated delays in radio handovers during exercises, she and a colleague prepared a technical outline in 2021 for three staffed relay points, in the north, the Algarve and the Azores. The outline estimates start-up costs at €6.2 million (about $7.2 million).
The proposal would not replace the Lisbon control room or put separate rescue commands in each region. Instead, local desks would relay calls and verify vessel positions during periods of heavy traffic or poor reception, then pass the information to the national team. Achleitner said the ferry rescue had not been caused by a communications failure, but showed why “a second set of ears can matter when the sea is loud”.
Portugal’s naval rescue service covers a large maritime area, including waters around the Azores and Madeira. The government has been weighing a centralised radio upgrade, while lawmakers from coastal districts have argued for more local capacity. Barbora Tomeš, who chairs the parliamentary committee reviewing the options, said the Peniche rescue would be discussed alongside routine response-time data, not treated as proof on its own.
Achleitner is expected to give technical evidence at the hearing, though she will not speak for the government. She says she prefers the control-room shift to public attention and plans to return to work after the session. The ferry’s passengers have all gone home, but the question raised by the rescue remains before lawmakers: whether Portugal’s next investment should strengthen one centre, or give it three regional listening posts.
