‘We have to cling onto the hope that the men are still in there’

“THE longest days of our lives,” is how a sister of missing fisherman Pat Coady has described the time since 6pm last Wednesday, when the herring boat Pere Charles sank near Hook Head, taking five crewmen with it.

Kelly Coady said yesterday that the families of the five men are hoping against hope that their loved ones will be found inside the 35-metre trawler and that they can be brought home to the Dunmore East community.

“We just have to hope that they’re still in there. That’s all we have to cling on to,” she told the Irish Examiner at the waterfront in Dunmore East yesterday afternoon while, a couple of miles out to sea, navy divers were resuming their recovery operation.