Sea searches are expected to resume at first light today for seven fishermen lost at sea, following two vessel sinkings within hours of each other off the Waterford coastline.
The second sinking was confirmed last night when two Lithuanian crew members from the Kinsale trawler, Honeydew II, were rescued from a life raft off Mine Head, Co Waterford.
The vessel's skipper/owner Gerard Bohan and a Polish crewman had also been on the 22-metre wooden vessel when it got into difficulties sometime during the early hours of yesterday morning, and were still missing late last night.
The two Lithuanian survivors, Viktoz Losev and Vladimir Kostvr, had spent many hours in heavy seas in the liferaft and were spotted by the Coast Guard's Waterford-based helicopter when they set off a flare just east of Mine Head. The two men were said to be in a good but "shocked" condition when they were taken to Waterford Regional Hospital.
A search for the skipper/owner, Mr Bohan, and the third Polish crewman was co-ordinated by the Naval Service patrol vessel LE Emer. It involved the Coast Guard's Dublin helicopter, lifeboats from Ballycotton and Dunmore East and several fishing vessels. Weather was reported to be difficult, with southwesterly gale force eight winds, poor visibility and a heavy swell.
The alarm was raised at 5.40pm yesterday when the Coast Guard issued an alert about the Honeydew II. Shortly before, the search for five men missing from the Wexford fishing vessel, Pere Charles, had been suspended for the night. As with the Pere Charles, no Mayday call had been issued, but concerns had grown throughout yesterday when the wooden vessel was overdue in port in Kinsale.
The Naval Service confirmed that the Honeydew II's last known position some seven miles east of Mine Head was transmitted at 00.30 hours on Thursday via the satellite vessel monitoring system (VMS). Further four-hourly transmissions from the VMS had not been recorded, and efforts to make contact with it were unsuccessful.
Lorcan Ó Cinnéide of the Federation of Irish Fishermen (FIF) said that the industry was in absolute shock last night and expressed its "sympathy for and solidarity with" the families of all seven men.
The Pere Charles is believed to have sunk shortly after 6pm on Wednesday evening, several miles south of Hook Head while en route into Dunmore East with herring.
On board were skipper Tom Hennessy (32), a father of one originally from the Maharees in Co Kerry, his uncle and fellow Kerryman Pat Hennessy (48), single, Billy O'Connor (50), a father of five from Dunmore East, Pat Coady (27), father of one from Duncormick, Co Wexford, and Andriy Dyrin (32), married with one child from Sevastopol in Ukraine. Mr Coady's father and grandfather both died in drowning accidents.
Local Dunmore East RNLI officer Nicho Murphy admitted yesterday evening that the chances of the five men surviving at this stage were virtually non-existent, as the vessel's two life rafts had been found inflated but empty.
Teams of Naval Service and Garda divers were on standby yesterday waiting for a break in the weather to dive in the area where the vessel's emergency position indicating radio beacon had been located.
In yet another alert, farther southwest, the RNLI Fenit lifeboat rescued a seriously injured Spanish fisherman early yesterday in what were described as "appalling" conditions at sea with a force 10 gale.
The alert was raised at 8am yesterday but weather precluded transfer of the casualty from the Spanish vessel which was 70 miles off the Kerry coast. The vessel steamed into Tralee Bay, by which time it had been confirmed that the injured crew member had serious head and shoulder injuries and had lost consciousness. Lifeboat crew boarded the vessel and transferred the casualty to shore.