Paddleboarders stranded at sea in Galway thought 'no one was looking' for them

Sara Feeney arriving at hospital in Galway after she and her cousin Ellen Glynn were rescued off Galway Bay.

Singing Taylor Swift songs and watching shooting stars sustained cousins Ellen Glynn, 17, and Sara Feeney, 23, during their 15-hour survival battle in the cold waters off Galway Bay.

“I think I know every line of Taylor Swift — we sang them all,” Ellen told the Irish Examiner, speaking from her ward at University Hospital Galway.

The cousins were swept by a 20-knot wind some 17 nautical miles out to sea while paddleboarding in Galway Bay.

Wearing only bikinis and with buoyancy aids on their paddleboards, Ellen recalled how they passed the seemingly endless hours in the darkness waiting for rescuers. 

"We would each talk about what we’d do when we get home.

“So I would say I was really looking forward to a hot shower and getting into comfy pyjamas,” Ellen said.

“Then it began lashing rain and it was freezing cold and we lay down on the boards, which we had strapped together early on, and we saw shooting stars which were really amazing,” she said.

“What I would really like to do is to thank the hundreds of people who came out on boats, planes, in helicopters, on foot, and said prayers and lit candles and raised the alarm on social media."

Ellen said that both a helicopter and a vessel were close enough to light up the sea around them.

There was lightning and heavy rain, and the waves became bigger and the pair were “shivering uncontrollably”, she said.

When sun rose, visibility was poor — but as the fog lifted, they realised just how far they had been swept, with the Cliffs of Mother just south of them, the Aran island of Inis Oírr to the north, and the Atlantic to the west.

“I had thought we were being carried into Galway, but we were being swept in the opposite direction,” Ellen said.

When Patrick Oliver and his son Morgan located them on their Johnny O vessel at around midday on Thursday, some two to three nautical miles south-west of Inis Oírr, Ellen said they told the two men that they thought “no one was looking" for them.

“And they said ‘do you know how many people are out looking for you'"? she said laughing.