Clyde Coastguard were called out this afternoon by the owner of holiday cottages at Skipness at the entrance to Loch Fyne in Argyll, opposite the Isle of Arran. Some people staying in the cottages had taken out a small rowing boat and could no longer be seen from shore. Rescue Helicopter 177 from Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) at Prestwick was on exercise in the area and was asked to divert by the Coastguard who also called out the Tighnabruaich Lifeboat. The helicopter located a dinghy over a mile offshore and directed a nearby yacht to the scene. A Frenchman and his seven year old son, who were cold and wet, were taken from the rowing boat by the yacht which kept them until the Lifeboat arrived to take them and the dinghy back to shore. The pair had taken the ten foot boat out to fish for mackerel, drifted out to a point where they could not make headway back to shore and started taking in water in choppy seas. Clyde Coastguard’s Stuart Atkinson pointed out that if the owner of the cottages had not called for help the situation could have been serious because the man and boy had no lifejackets, safety equipment or any means of making contact to ask for assistance. He said: “We recommend that anyone going afloat should carry appropriate safety equipment including lifejackets even for short trips because you never know what might happen at sea.”

The photo above is of Skipness Castle. The copyright on this image is owned by Patricvk Mackie, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.