Lifeboat rescue

Ballyglass lifeboat in marathon 26-hour rescue

Anton McNulty

CREW members of the RNLI Ballyglass lifeboat were involved in a ‘marathon’ rescue which lasted 26 hours last week when they had to tow a stricken fishing trawler to Killybegs harbour in Donegal.
This was the Ballyglass lifeboat’s first call-out of 2008 and what appeared to be a routine rescue turned out to be the longest rescue in the station’s history. On Tuesday morning last, at 10.30am, the station received a call to go to the assistance of a 25-metre Irish trawler, ‘Áine Patricia’, 47 miles northwest of Erris Head, which was experiencing mechanical trouble.
The ‘Áine Patricia’, which fishes out of Killybegs, had a crew of seven on board and was fishing for crabs when it got into difficulty. It is believed that there was trouble with the propellor of the boat and there was no other boat in the vicinity to assist them. Two of the fishermen on board came from the Belmullet area.
The lifeboat arrived at the trawler’s location at 1.20pm and, after an inspection of the boat, it was decided the only option was to tow the boat to Killbegs. Harry McCallum, Operations Manager with the Ballyglass lifeboat, explained to The Mayo News that it was the longest rescue undertaken by the Ballyglass crew.
“When they went out to the trawler the crew were not expecting to have to tow it to Killybegs. However, there was a south-western gale promised for that afternoon and they would not be able to tow a trawler into that gale. For safety reasons they had to head north to Killybegs and also because it is the only harbour which has equipment to lift boats out of the water. They were only travelling at six knots and during the rescue the towrope broke and they had to fix it. They were in Killybegs at 5am on Wednesday morning and were back in Ballyglass at 1.20pm,” he said.
Mr McCallum said the fact that the lifeboat crew are all volunteers and they had to take time off work shows the dedication they give to the job. He said it was an inconvenience to the volunteers but it was part of the job and they did not mind as long as no lives were lost.