Crew put out engine fire on boat off West Cork as RNLI team help it back to port

A team of quick-thinking crew members managed to put out a fire that broke out in the engine room of a 25-foot pleasure boat off the Seven Heads coast in West Cork this evening.

Volunteers from Courtmacsherry RNLI deployed their all-weather lifeboat Val Adnams at 5:04 pm today after receiving a ‘mayday’ call from the crew on board the vessel.

The lifeboat team reached the boat at 5:40 pm, luckily the crew on board had managed to extinguish the blaze and shut down the problematic engine – saving the lives of everybody on board.

They managed to continue their passage using their second engine and, with the assistance of the six-person RNLI crew – they brought the boat past the Old Head of Kinsale and it arrived in Kinsale at 7 pm and docked at the marina.

The Courtmacsherry RNLI Lifeboat voluntary Operations Manager, Brian O’Dwyer said: “It was great to be of assistance today on an incident that could have been very dangerous with a fire on-board.

He also lauded the crew for their fast response “It was appropriate that the causality issued a Mayday call for help quickly as minutes might matter in an incident like this.”

The Courtmacsherry Lifeboat Crew involved in today’s callout were Coxswain Ken Cashman, Mechanic Dave Philips and crewmembers Peter Nunan, Denis Murphy, Dean Hennessy and Kieran Boyle.

This is the second callout in three days for the Lifeboat in Courtmacsherry. The Courtmacsherry Sea Angling Boat “Lady Louise” under skipper Taylor Murphy (a Lifeboat crew member himself) was also in the area and stood by to help.