Sailors off Llandudno should pay for rescue call-outs

Nov 5 2009

ONE has to be sceptical about the reasons for the frequent engine failures of weekend sailors on passage along our coast.

My personal experience, some 50 years ago, was that marine engines could be very fickle.

Now they have become very reliable but they do need regular maintenance. Of the six call outs for Llandudno lifeboat this year, five were for ‘engine failure’.

The fly in the ointment is the mobile phone. I can appreciate the problems that the Coastguards have in dealing with calls from broken down boats. As for sea sickness, while unpleasant, is not a fatal condition requiring emergency medical treatment.

If a person suffers from it maybe they should not be out in a boat.

If you drive along a motorway and you have a breakdown, unless you subscribe to one of the recovery services, it can be very costly.

In Spain on the Sierra Nevada mountains if a person has to be rescued the rescue teams make an assessment of the rescued persons liability on the basis of whether they have suitable equipment or ignore warnings etc. If there is clear negligence then the person could face a bill for thousands of Euros. The similar applies in Switzerland. Our mountain rescue teams in Nth. Wales are being stretched from a torrent of mobile phone calls from silly people who have lost their way.

22 Squadron at Valley have only ever had two helicopters with crews actually on standby.

I would suggest that sailors should have to either annually subscribe to the RLNI for rescue cover or at least their insurance companies should pay for the cost of a call out.

The sea is potentially a very dangerous place and the public who go out on it have to recognise that and proceed with great caution. Are not the lives of our lifeboatmen, who are paid a pittance, even more valuable?

John Lawson-Reay,

Llandudno