A stiff wind had blown the clouds away and the sun shone down from a near clear azure sky as crowds gathered for the annual memorial service in Dunmore East on Saturday to remember all those lost at sea off the Waterford coast over the past year.
About 700 people gathered around Patrick Cunningham's bronze sculpture of a lifeboat near the quayside in the busy fishing port to see the names of 13 more men lost at sea added to the 171 entries already on the curved granite memorial wall.
Among those remembered were Pat Colfer (37) and Jimmy Myler (46) from Wexford who perished when their boat, The Rising Sun went down off the Saltee Islands on November 29th, 2005, and diver, Billy O'Connor (51) who died in the search operation.
Five months later, two other families were left to mourn when the Maggie B from Ballycotton in Co Cork went down five miles off Hook Head on March 29th, 2006, with the loss of skipper, Glynn Cott (30) and Polish crewman, Jan Sankowski (45 ).
Then on November 1st last, 62-year-old Patrick McCabe from Drogheda, Co Louth, drowned when he fell overboard from the Boyne Harvester as she dredged for cockles and mussels some 3kms from Dunmore East. January 2007 brought no respite with the double tragedy of the sinking of the Pere Charles off Hook Head on January 10th and less than 12 hours later, in the early hours of January 11th, the sinking of the Honeydew II off Ram Head near Ardmore.
Skipper of the Pere Charles, Tomasin Hennessy (30) and his entire crew of Pat Hennessy (48), Billy O'Connor (52), Patrick Coady (27) and Andriy Dyrin (32), from the Ukraine, were all lost when their boat went down as she was returning to Dunmore East.
Just 20 miles further west along the coast, Ger Bohan (39) from Kinsale and his Polish crewmate, Tomasz Jagla (32) were lost when the Honeydew II went down. Two other crew, Viktoz Losev and Vladamir Kostyr were rescued by the emergency services.
Saturday's ceremony began with Chairman of the Memorial Committee, John Walsh, welcoming the families of those who perished at sea before local parish priest Fr Brian Power asked people to join in prayer for those lost.
"We gather to remember and pray for those remembered by this memorial and all those lost at sea. This year has been a particularly tragic year with 13 names added to this memorial," said Fr Power as many of the relatives wept openly and hugged each other.
Soprano, Aoife Murphy sang a stilling Abide With Me.
