Distress call was previous alert

It has been revealed that the callout – which resulted in the Stromness Lifeboat being launched in the early hours of yesterday morning – had nothing to do with the Spanish fishing vessel O Genita.

The lifeboat crew were paged by the Coastguard just after 3am. Conditions were again rough, with a 30 knot westerly wind and a high swell. According to the distress alert, The O Genita was north-west of Westray at the time.

However, as the lifeboat was just west of Hoy Sound, the RNLI crew received a call from the Coastguard saying that the fishing vessel crew were not in distress.

What had happened was that another VHF radio station essentially ‘reactivated’ the old distress call from last week, so in fact it was a duplicate.

The O Genita was nowhere near the area, and were not involved with the callout.