Sea Breeze III: The Call That Was Never Made

What Happened

On 7 July 2024, Sea Breeze III departed Portmagee for Great Skellig with two crew and 12 passengers, in favourable weather. The passengers and one crew member landed on Great Skellig around 0900, leaving the skipper alone aboard to drift and await their return — standard practice for this operation.

At about 0910, the engine compartment bilge alarm sounded. The skipper found water at the base of the engine, started the bilge pumps, and phoned the vessel's owner rather than the Coast Guard. They agreed the vessel would attempt to return to Portmagee, 9.5nm away, with the owner meeting it en route on a faster vessel.

Twenty-Eight Minutes

The stern gradually settled lower. By the time the owner reached the vessel around 0935, it was already close to sinking. The skipper transferred across within minutes, and Sea Breeze III sank stern-first in roughly 80 metres of water shortly after — about 28 minutes after the bilge alarm first sounded. The EPIRB activated as the vessel went down. No VHF or phone call was made to the Coast Guard at any point during those 28 minutes.

The investigation could not definitively establish the source of the water ingress — a failed skin fitting or hose is the most likely cause, though a hull impact during the earlier landing at the Great Skellig dock couldn't be conclusively ruled out either.

What If the Timing Had Been Different

The investigation's own framing is worth sitting with directly: this vessel had been carrying 14 people on the passage out that same morning. Had this exact emergency developed then, instead of after everyone had safely landed, "the outcome had the potential for far more serious consequences." Nothing about the outcome that day depended on the decisions made in the moment — it depended entirely on who happened to already be off the vessel.

Recommended Actions

1. Alert the Coast Guard by VHF immediately once a genuine flooding emergency is suspected — a call to the owner is not a substitute, and doesn't get search-and-rescue assets moving any sooner.
2. Treat "we can probably make it back" as a plan to run in parallel with early notification, never as a reason to delay it.
3. Use vessel-specific pre-departure checklists, and train all skippers and crew in their correct use.
4. Hold full, current passenger contact details for the duration of any offshore passage, not just at check-in.
5. Review shoreside emergency procedures regularly, including who's actually contactable and how, not just who's nominally responsible on paper.

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Related Reading

• Ben Thomas: Six Failures, One Loss of Life