News / Busy weekend
SHETLAND coastguard and Lerwick lifeboat have had a busy weekend helping yachts, sick seamen and an injured man on the Scottish mainland.
The first emergency at 12.30pm on Saturday was a sick crewman working on the deep water offshore support vessel Deep Cygnus, which had left Peterhead heading for BP’s Clair Ridge project.
The was picked up 40 miles east of Wick by the Shetland rescue helicopter Oscar Charlie and landed at Sumburgh from where he was taken to Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick.
Twelve hours later at half past midnight the crew on the 27 foot Norwegian yacht Ah-ha called in saying they had run out of fuel 12 miles east of Lerwick and the local lifeboat was called out to tow them in.
As soon as the lifeboat returned to Lerwick it was called out again to help another 27 foot Norwegian yacht, Roed, which had got in trouble in fog while sailing to Whalsay, this time finding and escorting the vessel 15 miles south to Lerwick.
At 3.30am the coastguard HQ in Lerwick called out the Stromness lifeboat to assist the fishing boat Astra 19 miles north west of Orkney, which turned out to be a false alarm after the skipper accidentally activated the man overboard alert.
And finally in the early hours of Monday morning Lerwick’s coastguard officers coordinated the rescue of a male tourist who had fallen 80 feet down a cliff at Scrabster and had to be taken to hospital.
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