Paddleboarders in Galway rescued after 15 hours in the sea
A woman and a teenage girl have been found clinging to a lobster pot off the Irish coast after going missing for almost 15 hours while paddleboarding, according to BBC News.
Sara Feeney (23) and her cousin Ellen Glynn (17) were found alive by a fisherman about 17 miles from where they first set out, the RNLI said.
The pair are well and being treated at University Hospital Galway.
The cousins went missing after setting out from a beach at Furbo, County Galway, on Wednesday evening while Sara’s mother, Helen Feeney, was walking the dog along the beach. When they didn’t return, she alerted the coastguard, according to BBC News.
A major air and sea search and rescue operation, involving the Irish coastguard and local volunteers, began after the alarm was raised at 22:00 local time, and continued until their discovery.
Despite the bad weather overnight, the women – who had lifejackets but not wetsuits – were found by a fisherman.
The fisherman who found them, Patrick Oliver, told Irish broadcaster RTÉ that he was prepared to go as far as necessary to rescue them, otherwise they would have drifted further out to sea. “They travelled about 20 miles from the beach to the side of Inis Oírr [one of the Aran Islands],” he said.
Feeney’s mother told RTÉ they were “overwhelmed and grateful” and that paddleboards would “never darken the doors of our house again”.
This incident comes just days after the Maritime & Coastguard Agency posted on Facebook that they had seen a rise in the number of incidents involving paddleboards, and offered some simple steps to stay safe:
