Weather hampers sea search

Efforts by divers hoping to search the wreck of the missing trawler, the Pere Charles , have again been hampered as conditions…

Efforts by divers hoping to search the wreck of the missing trawler, the Pere Charles, have again been hampered as conditions threaten to worsen off the south west coast.

Worsening weather conditions have forced Naval Service divers to return to the LE Eithne, which is co-ordinating search efforts.

Naval Service divers identified the location of the steel-hulled Pere Charleswith the aid of side-scan sonar equipment last week.

The vessel is lying in about 30m of water two miles south of Hook Head, Co Wexford. Attempts yesterday to reach the trawler were hindered by bad weather and the search had to be postponed until this morning.

READ MORE

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.

The search is also expected to resume for the bodies of two crewmen missing from the Honey Dew IIfor skipper Ger Bohan and his Polish crewmate Tomasz Jagla.

It is still unclear where exactly the Honeydew IIwent down on January 11th, with two crew members, Lithuanians Viktoz Losev and Vladimir Kostyr managing to make it into a life raft.

It is thought it sank off Mine Head between Dungarvan and Ardmore sometime after 1am on Thursday morning.

Special prayers for the seven fishermen and their families are also being offered up said at all churches in Kinsale and Dunmore East and across Co Waterford.