All good plans.....

[Mark and Karen]

Not the result we were expecting ! 

We had planned to take a couple of friends over to Northern Ireland for a weeks sailing in Belfast Lough, two hours into the ten hour trip and the weather changed completely with large rough seas and a good 28knts steady wind instead of the 12-14 on the forecast. One of our friends fell ill, really ill and so we headed to the Isle of Man to hide out of the way of the weather for a while. Things didn't improve and shock took over from sea sickness which meant that it would be impossible to go ashore in our small inflatable, so I used our small hand held vhf radio to see if there were any ribs in Ramsey that could pop out and assist getting someone to shore. Booming over the radio came Liverpool coast guard who had heard our call, quick conversation and they dispatched a lifeboat as this was the safest option to get them ashore and have medical support when they got there.

These people are all volunteers and got to us within 10 minutes of the radio call - wow.

Karen and I sat out on anchor for two nights until things calmed down and headed for home, we will go back to NI another time, and for next week, well perhaps we will find some sun on the other end of a plane journey

Well, it was something quite different!