A FISHING trip ended in near-disaster yesterday, giving its young crew a half-term break they will never forget. The Lady Maris of Braye started to sink after hitting a rock off Burhou, two miles north-west of Alderney, at about 3pm.
On board were three children, four teenagers and two adults. All nine were unharmed and were rescued by Alderney’s lifeboats.
‘Thankfully the skipper did absolutely the right thing,’ said Alderney harbour master Steve Shaw.
‘It would have gone down very quickly and we would have been looking for people and fishing them out of the water otherwise.’
On board were builder Andy Newman and his three children, Lewis, Tommy, and Rio, who had been fishing on the breakwater when Lady Maris’s skipper, Darren Machon, invited them out to sea just before 2.30pm.
Four students back in the island on a half-term break from college in Guernsey were already on board.
The trip soon ran into trouble.
‘We had just started fishing and within three or four minutes one of the lads on the starboard side shouted that there was a rock and bang, we hit it,’ said Mr Newman, who had been on the Lady Maris many times before.
‘It happened very quickly, from hitting the rock to having the water come in. We sent the distress signal and I could see the boat was getting slower and getting lower in the water.’
Mr Machon, who has co-owned the boat for about 12 years, told the crew to put on lifejackets before deciding to beach on Burhou.
Mr Newman immediately put his children in the front of the boat so he could go aft and help pump out the hull. The lifeboat arrived about 15 minutes later.
‘I was a bit scared for a bit. The adults were panicky and they were moving around very quickly,’ said Mr Newman’s elder son, Lewis, a 12-year-old Grammar School pupil.
His brother Tommy, 11, who goes to St Anne’s School, said that everything had happened very quickly: ‘It felt strange.
I had to reel in, put my rod down on the floor, put a lifejacket on - all in a hurry.’
Back in Alderney Julie Newman had just received a phone call from her husband, telling her what had happened and reassuring her everyone was all right.
She rushed down to the harbour and waited for what seemed like forever.
‘I just had to wait and wait for ages and my friend came down to be with me. You just feel so helpless standing on Alderney, looking over at Burhou and knowing your family is in trouble there. I was just so relieved when I saw them coming into the harbour.’
The youngest crewmember, seven-year old Rio, said the experience had been scary, but exciting too.
‘I have some news to tell school next week,’ she said.
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