Ruairí McSorley was “hypothermic and exhausted” when found. He was conscious, wearing only a pair of swimming trunks when he was pulled out of Tralee Bay.

McSorley planned to swim out to Mucklaghmore Rock, 9 km out from where he set off at Castlegregory beach. His clothes and abandoned belongings are what led to the search.

The 34-year-old was stranded at sea for over 12 hours. He is alive today thanks to a pod of dolphins. McSorley was rescued 4 kilometers from shore by Fenit Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) at 8:15 p.m.

12 hours later, RNLI coxswain Finbarr O’Connell calculated where he could have ended up after analyzing tides in the area.

O’Connell said the swimmer was surrounded by dolphins when he was found. Later identified as bottlenose dolphins, the sea creatures have been seen off the Irish coast since 2019.

“Maybe they helped him in some way or another: who knows?” he said.

The Fenit RNLI and R118 coastguard performed an intensive search to locate McSorley.

O’Connell refused to take all the credit, noting that the crew they have are “all excellent.”

“It’s good to get a positive result. Normally we go out, and it mightn’t be that positive. We are all just elated,” he said.

McSorley was brought to the University of Hospital Kerry, where he is recovering.

No one, including the medics, could believe he survived it, but he did.

“It is literally beyond us all (how he survived),” he said. “He was only wearing a pair of trunks. He had no wetsuit. Nothing. He must have been a good swimmer because he was just over two and a half miles (4km) from the beach.”

McSorley’s body temperature dropped to dangerously low levels. He went in around 8 in the morning, and rescuers picked him up at 8:15.

“He did spend that amount of time in the water, and I don’t know how he did it,” O’Connell said. “It’s incredible, really.”

He continued,

“The elation of seeing somebody floating alive in the water, rather than the other way, is so great,” O’Connell recalled. “We have had too many bad outcomes, so it was absolutely fantastic to pick him up.”

O’Connell explained that they had been trained to handle scenarios like McSorley’s.

A mannequin thrown in the water behaves like a person would, he says. O’Connell and his crew leave it there for exercises that take them a few hours. They would return to see how far the mannequin has drifted. They then pick it up and note in their chart the direction the tide is going.

That’s the knowledge they applied during the operation to rescue Ruairí.

What they didn’t take in to account was the fact that dolphins were willing to help in the rescue operation. Ruairí was very lucky he made a few friends in the water. Things could have turned out very differently.

O’Connell added that the situation could have ended worse if McSorley was left there for 30 minutes longer.

Fenit RNLI volunteer Jackie Murphy said it was a miracle how McSorley survived. Murphy advised swimmers to exercise caution when venturing into the water for a swim. Not everyone will find dolphins around.

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Source: My Positive Outlooks