All at sea - the pair who stole trawler to get home(Drunken Irishmen)

TWO Irishmen who stole a fishing trawler and tried to sail 67 miles across the Irish Sea after missing their ferry home were yesterday nursing hangovers and regrets in a police cell.

To their disappointment, they found they were still in Britain after sailing in the wrong direction and going around in circles.

Stephen Brennan and John Mahoney prompted a big air and sea rescue after realising, too late, that they did not have a clue how to sail the 30ft boat.

After twiddling the knobs on the boat’s radio, they managed to issue a mayday call, prompting a search by an RAF Sea King helicopter, a Holyhead lifeboat and a coastguard cliff rescue team. “They had no experience of the sea whatever; they didn’t even know how to switch the cabin light on,” said Ray Steadman, launching officer of the Holyhead lifeboat.

The hapless pair stole the trawler Le Bon Mawr on Saturday night from the fishing quay at Holyhead harbour on Anglesey, North Wales, after they missed their ferry home at the end of a drinking session.

After eight hours at sea and an operation costing several thousands pounds, they were eventually located by the Holyhead lifeboat.

They had assumed they were heading for Dublin, but when they were eventually found they were off Wylfa in Anglesey, having sailed 12 miles in the wrong direction.

Mr Steadman said: “They were completely lost and when they made the mayday call actually thought they were speaking to coastguards in Ireland. They were very surprised when they realised they were talking to Holyhead.

“At the end they were very worried and just pleased to be found because they had been going round in circles.

“They thought they were heading to Dublin but in fact they were going in the opposite direction.”

The men were towed into Holyhead by the lifeboat and were handed over to police who, believing that there had been no damage to the boat, let them off with a caution.

However, when the boat’s owner, Paul Jones, 38, complained that his engine may have been badly damaged, they were rearrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Mr Jones, married with two children, paid £40,000 for the trawler and runs a one-man business fishing in the Irish Sea for skate, cod and plaice. At first he thought that the boat was undamaged, but during a later inspection he discovered that there was oil spread over the engine and he fears that it could have been seriously damaged. An engineer will carry out an inspection today.

He said: “I went back to the police as soon as I realised the engine may have been harmed. I still owe money for the boat, which is my livelihood. To me this is very serious.”

A police spokeswoman explained that the men were at first released with a caution for taking the boat without authority because they had no previous convictions. When the owner later reported that he believed that the engine had been damaged they were rearrested and were in custody awaiting interview.

Douglas Corrigan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan (January 22, 1907–December 9, 1995) was an American aviator born in Galveston, Texas. In 1938, after a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York, he flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, to Ireland, even though he was supposed to be returning to Long Beach. He claimed that his unauthorized flight was due to a navigational error, caused by heavy cloud cover that obscured landmarks and low-light conditions, causing him to misread his compass. Corrigan, however, was a skilled aircraft mechanic (he was one of the builders of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis) and a habitual risk-taking maverick; he had made several modifications to his own plane, preparing it for transatlantic flight. Between 1935 and 1937, he applied several times, unsuccessfully, for permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and it is likely that his "navigational error" was a protest against government "red tape"; however, he never publicly acknowledged having flown to Ireland intentionally.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Corrigan

[In my opinion he did 'pretend' to make the mistake. In those years trans-Atlantic flights were still newsworthy and his whacky tale cheered up the Depression weary country.]

In my opinion he did 'pretend' to make the mistake.

It sounds very much like it!!

Though, on a slightly different incident, a sane explanation I have heard of those five planes that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle suggests genuine "navigational error"!

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