Attempts to recover the bodies of five fishermen thought to be aboard their sunken trawler had to be called off again yesterday after a team of divers were unable to enter the vessel on the sea-bed.
Teams of Naval Service and Garda divers managed to get down to the Père Charles lying in 27 metres of water off Hook Head yesterday morning but were unable to enter the vessel. They had to abandon recovery efforts after a third dive in the afternoon.
With the long-range forecast predicting bad weather until at least Sunday, it may well be next week before divers can get down again to the Père Charles to try to locate the five bodies.
The ship sank very quickly last Wednesday and it is hoped that the bodies of skipper Tom Hennessy, his uncle Pat Hennessy, Pat Coady, Billy O'Connor and Andriy Dyrin from Ukraine are still on board on the steel-hulled trawler.
Chris Reynolds, incident officer with the Coast Guard, said Naval Service and Garda divers carried out two dives on the wreck yesterday morning and established that it was lying on its starboard side on the sea-bed.
"It had gone very far over on its starboard side, so effectively walls had become decks and decks had become walls, which is very disorienting," Mr Reynolds said.
"There's also a lot of netting around the vessel and it's shifting around on the bottom as it pivots on its gunnel, plus the visibility down there, even with high powered lights, was just 1½ feet, which made it a very difficult operation."
Mr Reynolds said there were two main access points to the sunken vessel - a door into the wheelhouse and an aft hatch, but the wheelhouse door was resting against the sea-bed and was virtually inaccessible.
The divers were forced to abandon the morning operation after two dives when the tide began to change but they again returned to the scene yesterday afternoon when one dive team managed to get down to the Père Charles.
"They managed to clear away some of the netting and got to the wheelhouse door but the boat had landed very heavily on its side and the wheelhouse door was crushed."
Mr Reynolds said that the team shone lights into the wheelhouse but all they could see in there was debris.
They did not see any bodies but it was possible they were hidden beneath the debris.
"It looks now that there's a bad spell of weather coming in. The long-range forecast at least until Sunday is belt after belt of low pressure, almost like a conveyor belt, so it doesn't look as if the divers will be able to get down there again this week."
Meanwhile, shore searches by members of the Coast Guard Cliff and Coastal Rescue teams from Wexford and Waterford have continued to recover debris which they believe came from the wreck of Kinsale boat Honeydew II.
Jim Griffin, Dunmore East Coast Guard area officer, said it was believed the 25 or so fishing boxes which were recovered along the coast over the past few days are all from the Honeydew.
Following discussions with local fishermen in Kinsale, they have also identified a life ring and other personnel belongings as coming from the trawler which disappeared off Mine Head in west Waterford on January 12th.
"It seems as it debris was carried easterly first of all but now has started to wash back in a westerly direction," Mr Griffin said.
