A village that held fast to the spirit of its seafaring traditions welcomed President Michael D Higgins yesterday to commemorate the crew of the Tit Bonhomme.

Friends of the missing San Francisco yachting tragedy sailors held memorial services in Ireland and the US at the weekend.

The man who used to helm the US yacht which crashed, claiming the lives of two Cork sailors last weekend, has given a further insight into the sequence of events that led up to the tragedy.

The US coastguard has called off its search for two Cork men blown from their racing yacht by waves off the California coast, saying the “window of survivability had passed”.

The US Coastguard has suspended its search for the missing crew members of a yacht which hit rocks in San Francisco Bay yesterday.