One of the biggest ever sea searches mounted on the south coast was hampered yesterday by bad weather conditions which limited searchers to surface and shore operations to recover seven fishermen missing in two trawler tragedies.
Stormy seas with gale force eight winds and swells of up to six metres prevented divers from entering the water and it could be tomorrow before they can safely dive to search locations off Co Wexford and Waterford for the missing men.
As searchers expressed confidence that they had located the Dunmore East-based Père Charles, which sank on Wednesday night, hopes faded further for missing fishermen Ger Bohan and Tomas Jagla from the Kinsale-based Honeydew II.
The Honeydew IIwent down off Mine Head between Dungarvan and Ardmore sometime after 1am on January 11th, with two crew members, Lithuanians Viktoz Losev and Vladimir Kostyr managing to make it into a life raft.
According to Declan Geoghegan of the Coast Guard, Mr Losev and Mr Kostyr had told coastguard personnel that Mr Jagla was trying to join them in the life raft when he was suddenly caught by a wave and swept into the sea and lost.
The skipper, 39-year-old father of four, Ger Bohan from Kinsale, had returned to the wheelhouse of the Honeydew IIto send a Mayday distress signal when the wooden-hulled trawler suddenly sank, Mr Losev and Mr Kostyr told their rescuers.
According to Mr Geoghegan that last contact with the Honeydew II was some 13km off Mine Head at about 1am, when she made contact with another trawler, the Rachel J, as she made her way west at a speed of around three knots. The crew of the Rachel Jbecame concerned for the Honeydew IIwhen they failed to make contact with her at about 3am, in keeping with an arrangement between both vessels, and it's believed that she sank sometime between 1am and 3am.
Mr Losev and Mr Kostyr spent almost 20 hours in the life raft in stormy seas and had drifted almost 29km until they were 11km off Tramore when they saw a search helicopter and let off one of their flares. Yesterday, the LE Emerco-ordinated a major search operation for the Honeydew II, covering some 800sq km from Mine Head east to Dunmore East with some six vessels, many of them from Kinsale, joining in the search.
The Coast Guard helicopter from Waterford and the Irish Air Corps fixed-wing Casa from Baldonnel also carried out sweeps of the area, while the RNLI Ballycotton lifeboat also assisted in the search in the choppy seas.
On shore, about 100 searchers, drawn from the Coast Guard and cliff and coastal search teams from Ardmore, Helvic, Bonmahon and Tramore, carried out searches for any traces of the Honeydew II and the two missing fishermen.
Several fish boxes believed to be from the missing Kinsale boat were recovered.