Irish Coast Guard Rescues 14 Fishermen From Grounded Trawler
The Irish Coast Guard has successfully rescued the crew of a French fishing vessel that drifted onto the rocks near Dingle, a small port on the southwestern tip of Ireland.
On Sunday morning, the trawler Fastnet lost power while outbound from Dingle. Before the crew could recover propulsion, the boat drifted towards the rocky shore near the Dingle lighthouse, just outside the sheltered harbor. With strong winds and heavy swells, there was little time to prevent a grounding.
At about 1130 hours that morning, the master of the Fastnet made a distress call to the Irish Coast Guard, which dispatched multiple assets to the scene, including a fixed-wing search plane and the helicopter aircrew Rescue 115. The Dingle coast guard unit's response boat, the RNLI lifeboat out of Knightstown and the Irish Navy patrol vessel George Bernard Shaw also got under way.
The local response boat crew tried to get a line across to establish a tow, but the rough surface conditions and shallow near-shore waters made this impractical. The only possibility was to evacuate the crew by air. Despite rough weather conditions and patchy fog, the helicopter airlifted all 14 crewmembers safely from the Fastnet and delivered them to shore.
According to Irish media, traces of diesel have been spotted on the surface, suggesting a likely hull breach. The trawler continues to be battered by stormy weather, raising concerns of further pollution if it should break up.
Fastnet is a 28-meter bottom trawler built in 2000. It is French-registered, Spanish-owned, and based in A Coruña, according to fishing industry media.
U.S. Coast Guard Rescues Fisherman From Burning Boat Off Florida
On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued a fisherman from the water after a commercial fishing vessel caught fire about 100 miles to the west of Clearwater, Florida.
At about 1530 hours on Sunday, Coast Guard Southeast District received an EPIRB alert from a fishing boat at a position off Florida's Gulf coast. Watchstanders dispatched a Jayhawk helicopter aircrew to the scene to investigate. On arrival, the aircrew found a burning vessel and one individual alive and afloat in a life raft.
At about 1745 hours, in moderate surface conditions, the aircrew deployed their rescue swimmer into the water and retrieved the survivor unharmed.
“The boater was able to quickly deploy a life raft and abandon their burning vessel,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Isaiah Andrews, a search & rescue controller at Southeast District command center. “Through quick actions and the utilization of an emergency position indicating radio beacon our aircrew was able to narrow the search area for a timely rescue.”
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
It is the second high-profile rescue for the region's Coast Guard units in less than a month. In late November, a helicopter aircrew rescued four people who had survived atop the upturned hull of their boat for 20 hours off Clearwater, including a 90-year-old man.
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