Dog and handler rescued from rubber dinghy
One man and his dog have been rescued from a drifting inflatable four miles off the coast. The RNLI lifeboat crew at Troon were paged at 7.50pm during scheduled Monday evening exercise on 23 July after reports of a flare four miles off Troon harbour.
On arrival at the scene, the crew found a single person plus a dog adrift in a small inflatable dingy. The seaman and his dog were taken aboard the all-weather lifeboat and brought back to Troon where the man was handed over to paramedics. He was then taken to Ayr hospital for further treatment.
As the story of the rescue unfolded, it came to light that the person rescued had been reported as being ‘overdue’ in his vessel Destiny at 2.00pm the previous afternoon.
Adrift all night, without engine power or pumps keeping the water at bay, his vessel succumbed around 24 hours later, capsized and sank off Ardrossan. The man abandoned his vessel, with his dog, and boarded the small inflatable dinghy which he had launched just a few minutes before Destiny capsized. The man and his dog spent another six hours adrift in his dinghy before a vigilant member of the public saw his last distress flare and raised the alarm.
After an estimated 30 hours, with the vessel giving up the ability to maintain steerage, gale force winds whipping up the seas of the area, loss of communication and finally to have the boat sink, it would be safe to say that the volunteer crew arrived in the nick of time.
Both seaman and dog are in the best of hands and recovering well from their ordeal.
The safe launch and recovery of the lifeboat was assisted by members of Troon lifeboat shore crew.