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Displaying items by tag: Portballintrae

#WATER SAFETY - The Belfast Telegraph reports that an 11-year-old girl has died in an accident at the seaside near Portballintrae in Co Antrim.

The young girl, who has not yet been named, was taken to hospital in critical condition after getting into difficulties while body-boarding with her family at Bushfoot Strand yesterday afternoon.

Onlookers praised the efforts of the coastguard and bystanders in giving the youngster CPR before paramedics arrived.

However, a passer-by noted that the ambulance had some trouble in finding the access road to the beach - and added that the stretch is known by locals to be unsafe for bathing.

A spokesperson for the Belfast coastguard warned bathers to be wary of strong rip currents which are common on the north coast.

Published in Water Safety

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago