A Cautionary Tale!

Sound advice Colin, I well remember a similar experience on L. Garadice, Co. Leitrim, when my more experienced fishing mate and I borrowed a boat with a tiny electric outboard motor to visit Swan Island. The outbound trip took ten minutes, with the wind at our backs. The return trip took fifty minutes with the boat taking a serious pounding into the wind. We had no lifejackets! The boat was piled high with fishing gear; I was wearing waders! It was one of the worst fifty minutes of my life. Never again!

Andy

I'm not sure that I ever got caught out in a force 10 (which I thought was hurricane force) but I have been out on Lough Conn and Maska few times and regretted straying too far from home. Some pretty fearsome waves seem often to appear from nowhere.

I remember the first time I took my wife trout fishing was on Lough Conn. We were fishing around Chain Island with the wind coming off shore. Sue got a bit bored after an hour or so and asked if we could go around the headland onto the Abbey Shore. I knew what it was going to be like around there and said it will be a bit "lumpy"but she still wanted to go. Well, we never got more than about 50 yards around the headland before she was pleading to go back again. My 18 foot boat was rising at the bow, then dropping into the trough of the waves, leaving Sue almost suspended momentarily in mid air, to come crashing down on the thwarts with a great thump. She didn't enjoy that much.

I'd add a few more things to your list, Colin. Minismokes cost only a few quid and are excellent at alerting someone to the fact that you're stranded or in trouble. And a waterproof torch, esp. a bright LED torch, is another good signalling tool.

You can buy waterproof matches, and THESE things are really reliable and last forever. Finally, many's the life that's been saved by a bailer - just a cut-down plastic bottle, or something like that. For one thing, the fact that the poor sod doing the bailing is right in the bottom of the boat, in the bilge, keeps the boat more stable!

Well-known Stockport loony Gord Burton once gave me a scare on Lomond, and I've had a few fishing off Weymouth, too.