For Argyll

An angler in his seventies was swept away on Saturday in Argyll’s Sound of Islay during the forty-eight hour Coastguard strike. The man, who was fishing with friends at Inver on the Jura side of the sound and was not wearing a life jacket, was rescued by a Lossiemouth-based RAF helicopter and taken to Lorn and the Isles Hospital in Oban but died later. Coastguards from Belfast co-ordinated the rescue. Normally Clyde Coastguard would have taken charge from their base at Greeenock but strike action at Scotland’s five control centres left this station unmanned. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said that Belfast Coastguard had dispatched an RNLI lifeboat, local rescue coastguard teams and a Search and Rescue helicopter - and that all resources were actioned in eight minutes. He pointed out that the man’s lack of a life jacket was the crucial factor in his death, not the specific centre co-ordinating the rescue. The angler apparently slipped and fell into the 10C water, his waders filling. He was found almost a mile away. The Sound of Islay has a nine knot bore, one of the fastest in navigable waters in the UK.