Man-overboard ladders

Man-overboard ladders

By Lewis Cowie

On a cold Monday morning in early April 2018, the Quinn brothers, Michael Paul and John James, were setting their nets on Lough Neagh. Suddenly, they noticed something amiss with a pair of sand dredgers working on the Lough.

“It just looked unusual—it’s hard to say exactly what it was, but things just didn’t seem right”, says Michael.

“We went back to setting our nets, but a while later my brother said that he couldn’t see the second sand dredger anymore.”

The pair decided to investigate, as Michael explains,

“We were only three-quarters of a mile away so we decided to go over and have a look; it was just a gut feeling, really. When we arrived we found a man in the water shouting for help. The sand dredger had sunk, leaving him in the water...

...Fortunately, he was wearing a lifejacket, and we managed to get a hold of him by the side of our boat.”

Wearing a PFD can help to keep a person afloat in the water, but getting back onto the boat is another matter, “When someone is in the water, they can’t help lift themselves—he was a dead weight” says Michael.

The two brothers struggled against the cold, rough water to try and bring the man on board. “The sides of our boat are about three feet from the water and there were waves of two to three feet that day”, Michael says. “We just couldn’t get him aboard no matter how hard we tried. It was a scary situation.”

Brothers John James and Michael Quinn

With the aid of other fishermen, they managed to get hold of the man but were still unable to bring him out of the water. As Michael went on to explain, “Eventually we managed to get a rope under his arms and move our boat over to the remaining sand dredger. With six people helping, we still couldn’t get him out of the water.”

Thankfully, the lifeboat arrived and rescued the man. “By the time the lifeboat arrived, he had been in the water for half an hour,” added Michael. “It was a cold day and the water temperature was only 4°C. That’s a long time to be in the water. This was an eye-opener for us. I’ve never felt anything like it. Without help it w ould have been near impossible for us to get him out of the water.”

“This incident showed us that we needed a rope ladder on the boat, big time. It’s so compact and easy to do, and this applies to all fishermen.”

Rigged small MOB ladder bag.

Jim Young

In summer 2018, the Northern Ireland Fishing Safety Forum (NIFSF) held a series of roadshow events in Northern Ireland, offering fishermen information on training opportunities, cold-water shock, and man-overboard recovery. At the events, a number of free man-overboard (MOB) ladder bags were distributed to fishermen, to raise awareness of how important it can be to have a means of getting casualties out of the water as soon as possible. RNLI Fishing Safety Manager Frankie Horne explains, “To survive any man-overboard situation, the casualty needs to get out of the water. Rapid extraction is vital. Fishermen need to have a rigged and ready MOB recovery solution.”

The MOB ladder-bag initiative has been very successful and the bags are gaining real traction across the Northern Irish fishing industry. Fishermen have already installed MOB ladders on their boats in Ballycastle, Ballywater, Portavogie and Ardglass.

Incidents like the one on Lough Neagh show how important it is for fishermen to think beyond staying safe on board their vessel. It is equally important to think about how to get out of the water as soon as possible in the event of a manoverboard situation. For only £30, a MOB ladder bag is a cost effective and vital piece of safety equipment for every boat.

Following the terrifying incident on Lough Neagh, brothers Michael and John have installed a MOB ladder on their boat and hope that others will do the same. “I’ve been fishing on Lough Neagh for 50 years, but I’ve never experienced anything like that”, says Michael. “This incident showed us that we needed a rope ladder on the boat, big time. It’s so compact and easy to do, and this applies to all fishermen.”

MOB ladder bag

Alex Mcmullan

Northern Ireland Fishing Safety Forum

Since its establishment, the NIFSF has been working hard to deliver positive change in safety culture in the Northern Irish fishing industry. The proportion of Northern Irish fishermen wearing lifejackets has increased since NIFSF members delivered 1,800 lifejackets to NI industry and already several lives have been saved.

A survey of 96 fishermen in Northern Ireland by NIFSF in Spring 2018 found that 98% of respondents owned a lifejacket and that 93% of respondents wore their lifejacket all or most of the time when working at sea, particularly in bad weather.

For more information on the NIFSF please contact Dr Lynn Gilmore at Lynn.Gilmore@seafish.co.uk or check out the NIFSF Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/NIFSF