FIFTEEN PEOPLE HAD to be rescued in three separate marine operations yesterday, with high winds and unsettled conditions causing trouble for people at sea.
In the first incident three people using a motorboat and a jet ski got into trouble when their boat turned over and ended up in the water just off the Seven Heads coastline in West Cork.
The Courtmacsherry RNLI lifeboat was called out at 5.15 yesterday evening and found the men blown onto dangerous rocks at the Seven Heads. The lifeboat managed to rescue the men and they were taken safely ashore.
The Coast Guard unit from Seven Heads, the Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter and the Kinsale RNLI lifeboat all took part in the rescue.
In a separate incident the Coast Guard emergency team was called to assist a group of kayakers in difficulty at Red Rock in Sutton in Dublin.
The Howth Coast Guard and Dollymount life guards were tasked with the rescue. High offshore winds and a dropping tide resulted in the kayakers being pushed out further to sea.
Four kayakers were located by a lifeboat on the rocks. One was taken onboard while three others climbed up the cliff path back to safety.
Eight other kayakers were towed by boat back to the shore by the Dollymount lifeguards.
The group were part of a commercially organised trip, and were mostly novices. They were all wearing life jackets and wetsuits but had very limited safety equipment with them otherwise.
They had no distress flares or VHF radio equipment with them; they hadn’t observed a small craft warning that was in place; and they hadn’t logged their journey with the Coast Guard operations centre.
In a third incident, Crosshaven lifeboat was launched in Cork after a member of the public alerted the Coast Guard to three people in a small supermarket-type dinghy floating out to sea.
The boat launched but the dinghy had made it ashore at Ringabella beach and the people were safe.
Patsy Fegan, the lifeboat operations manager said that inflatable dinghies and lilos should “only be used in the confines of a swimming pool”.
Luckily these people came to no harm, but with a force 5 wind they could have drifted well offshore.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say