Time lost as naval service failed to note signals

A FRIEND of the Kinsale fisherman missing with his crewman at sea for a week has said a full day’s search time was lost because the naval service did not pick up on signs the vessel was in difficulty.

John Walshe, who raised the alert that the Honeydew II was missing last Thursday, said crucial hours and minutes in which searchers could have got to the wreck to track debris were lost because four missing signals indicating the vessel was in trouble were not picked up on.

Skipper Ger Bohan and crewman Tomasz Jagla are still missing from the vessel.

Two Lithuanians were rescued from a life raft nearly a day after the accident is though to have taken place.

Mr Walshe confirmed he was the last man to have radio contact with the Honeydew II.

“The two boats would work together a lot of the time. I spoke to Ger at midnight on Wednesday night,” he said.

He then described the satellite system which he believed could have helped to locate his friend.

“The Vessel Monitoring System is a satellite polling system checked every four hours. His last polling was at 11.30pm on Wednesday and his next should have been at 3.30am. We reckon just after 3am was the time of the accident. We just have a big issue in the industry that there were four polls missed when a big search was going on 20 miles to the east (for the Pere Charles),” said Mr Walshe.

“Normally if you miss a poll, Haulbowline is onto your home or your wife. It has happened to me before.

“Four checks were missed in the period between the time I called Mine Head to start a pan-pan, which is the lower version of a mayday. That Wednesday was critical for us to get to the wreck to follow the debris.”

Mr Walshe told how during the time between the last beacon signal being received in Haulbowline and the time the vessel had been found, he had tried to contact his friend by phone, on the radio channel they used and by sending sea signals through the same system. “They were coming back not delivered,” he said.

However, a spokesman for the naval service, which is a large part of the search for the seven crewmen of the Honeydew II and the Pere Charles, said the VMS is not an emergency system but a monitoring system for the fishing industry.

He said the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the trawlers were subject to investigation by the marine casualty investigation branch and could not be commented on. However, he said the satellite system for emergencies is the Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) system.

It was an EPIRB buoy which floated to the surface of the water which led searchers to the location of the Pere Charles. However, no buoy has been located for the Honeydew II.

Kinsale harbour master Phil Devitt said there were a number of reasons why the EPIRB system might not have made it to the surface.

“It might have got trapped in some rigging. The EPIRB is set to release at one to four metres, but if the boat has gone over quickly it might not have been released in time.”