The report into the sinking of the fishing vessel, the Honey Dew II says sea conditions were very rough with extremely high waves at the time of the sinking.
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http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0915/Honeydew.pdfThe report by the Marine Casualty Investigation Board states the main reason for the sinking was that a wave or waves caused sections of the port bulwark to fail catastrophically and be forced inward.
This allowed a large quantity of water to rapidly flood into the shelter deck space. The boat sank in a matter of minutes.
Conditions of storm force 10 were recorded off the west Waterford coast that night, with waves as high as 18m.
The skipper, 39-year-old Ger Bohan from Kinsale, and 31-year-old crew member Tomasz Jagla from Poland, were lost and presumed drowned.
An extensive search of the wreck by garda divers failed to locate the two missing men.
Two other crew members survived and were rescued 15 hours later. The boat itself was located two weeks later on the seabed south of Mine Head by another fishing vessel.
At the time of the sinking no distress call or emergency beacon signal was received from the vessel.
The Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, which would normally emit such a signal, was found on Courtown beach, Co Wexford, by a member of the public 11 months later and following battery replacement was found to operate satisfactorily.
The failure of the EPIRB to give out a distress signal can only be explained by its failure to float free of the vessel, the report says.
Topic: Severe conditions noted in Honey Dew II report (Read 1024 times)