A French-registered fishing vessel suffered water ingress and later capsized and sank off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, on Wednesday, October 22.
The 35-metre trawler Radoche Tercero was approximately 55 nautical miles off Castletown when the crew sent out a distress call saying they had gotten into difficulty and their vessel's engine room started to take on water on the morning (local time) of Wednesday.
The Irish Coast Guard requested both the Castletownbere and Baltimore Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) stations to launch their rescue boats along with a coast guard helicopter from Shannon and a coast guard fixed-wing aircraft.
Castletownbere RNLI launched its lifeboat with four crew on board while Baltimore RNLI launched its lifeboat with six crew on board. Weather conditions at the time were described as fair with a two-metre ground swell.
Before Castletownbere RNLI arrived on-scene just after 09:00, the crew received an update that the 12 people on board the trawler had abandoned their vessel and taken to their liferaft. They were then picked up by another fishing vessel that was in the area at the time.
Baltimore RNLI’s lifeboat was stood down while Castletownbere RNLI was requested to recover the EPIRB. The Castletownbere lifeboat crew arrived back to the station at 13:00.
The trawler capsized and sank at around 16:30 before any salvage effort could be attempted.
The Good Samaritan fishing vessel offloaded the rescued crewmembers in Castletown shortly after 17:00. No serious injuries have been reported.
Radoche Tercero's crew at the time included nine Spanish and three Indonesian nationals.
