MATARAM

Three people are dead after making a spur-of-the-moment decision late on Sunday to visit the famed tourist island of Gili Trawangan following the Pan Indonesia HASH 2010 recreational running event held in Lombok over the weekend.

They drowned when the boat they had hired capsized in rough seas an hour after setting sail from Senggigi.

Police named them as three members of a HASH party from Pekanbaru, Riau: Chaidir, 58; Gueking, 56; and Li Chasing, 43. Two of them drowned when trapped under the hull.

The third fatality was of one of the party who was rescued but died later in hospital.

The three had decided to visit Gili Trawangan when they could not get the seats they expected on an aircraft out of Lombok following the HASH event.

Twenty people from Pekanbaru were aboard the local boat which they had hired.

Police are questioning the skipper, named as Rumawan, 40, of Montong near Mataram, about the accident.

They said yesterday he had told them he had tried desperately to help those trapped under the hull, but some had been in or under the water for up to five minutes after the boat capsized.