‘Lack of navigation skill’ in trawler loss

TREACHEROUS weather conditions and a lack of basic navigation and position plotting skills by one of its crew have been blamed for the sinking of a Cork-registered vessel with the loss of two lives.

The Kinsale skipper of the Honeydew II, Ger Bohan, and one of his crew members, Pole Tomasz Jagla, died when the vessel sank off Ram Head in Co Waterford in January 2007. Two other Lithuanian men survived after getting into a liferaft.

The incident happened within hours of the sinking of the Pere Charles trawler with the loss of five lives, also off the south-east coast.