Young sailors rescued in Sligo during yacht club excursion

THE COAST GUARD and RNLI in Sligo were tasked yesterday morning to assist 17 people off the coast of Rosses Point.

Members of Sligo Yacht Club, including a number of children, got into trouble at about 11:50am yesterday when the weather changed. A decision was made to take entire group of young sailors, who were on small sailing boats, ashore.

The club itself had a safety boat that was used to collect some of the youths and the assistance of the Coast Guard and the RNLI was also sought. Footage from the rescue shows one man being taken out of the water but no injuries were reported. All members of the group were brought safely to shore.

Commenting afterwards, Sligo Bay RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager Willie Murphy said it was a “textbook callout” and that the yacht club did everything right. “Once conditions had changed and the squall came in the instructors prudently called for assistance,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Irish Coast Guard told TheJournal.ie today it wanted to give “full credit” to the club for being “very well organised” for the incident.

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