By Ray O'Hanlon
The body of a missing 30-year-old Dublin man was found last Saturday on the shore of an offshore island in Long Island sound, six days after a violent squall hurled him into the sea.
The body of Eoin Curran from Templeogue was found washed ashore on Huckleberry Island.
Curran was taking a sailing lesson on the 23-foot boat when it capsized. Curran and his sailing instructor were thrown into the water. Curran, a software engineer who worked for Google and was living in Brooklyn, was not wearing a lifejacket at the time.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, Curran was thrown a life preserver after he went overboard but he had disappeared under the water. The storm was generating winds estimated as high as 70 miles per hour at the time.
Curran was one of three sailing students on the sailboat along with an instructor from the New York Sailing School in New Rochelle.
When the wind from the storm blew the boat steeply to one side, Curran and his instructor were thrown into the water. The instructor made it back to the boat and threw a flotation device to Curran. But the winds separated the man from the float. His fellow sailors lost sight of him in the poor visibility.
The law requires that the boat carry life jackets for every passenger on board, but not that the passengers wear them.
The sailboat was less than a mile off Premium Point in New Rochelle when the squall hit.
The Irish Independent reported the victim's heartbroken father as describing his son as a "shining light."
"He really was a special guy and I can barely bring myself to talk about this. We are devastated, we miss him so deeply," John Curran told the paper.
