Weddy for action
Lifeboat bride has to leave her wedding celebration after emergency callout
EVEN though she was in the middle of celebrating her marriage, bride Rose Skelton didn’t hesitate.
She was ready to jump into action as soon as the emergency call came in to her and volunteer colleagues at Tobermory RNLI.
While Rose was told enough crew had turned up and she could go back to her party it demonstrates once again the commitment shown from volunteer life boat crews across the country and the debt we owe them.
A BRIDE had to make a sharp exit from her wedding celebration – when a boat with two people on board capsized in a freezing loch. Tobermory RNLI crew member Rose Skelton, 40, and her wife Nomi Stone, 38, had just had their earlier marriage in America sealed with a traditional lifeboat blessing when her pager sounded.
Rose said: “We exchanged rings and vows beside the lifeboat, it was lovely, it was really special.
“Mull and Iona Pipe Band came down the main street and the crew were there with the traditional archway of oars.”
But no sooner had the couple left a drinks reception at a local hall to get ready for an evening ceilidh with family and friends than Rose’s pager sounded.
She recalled: “I said, it’s a joke – but it wasn’t, there were two people in the water. Nomi is used to it and she said, ‘Go’.”
But as Rose was changing into her gear, coxswain David McHaffie told her enough crew had turned up so she was free to return to get ready for the ceilidh while others attended the callout for a capsized dinghy south of Oronsay island, at the entrance to Loch Sunart.
A spokesman for Stornoway Coastguard said a man and a woman were rescued.
The woman did not need hospital treatment but Tobermory crew member Andrew McHaffie added: “We got the guy on the boat. He had been in the water for a period of time and was very cold.
“As a precaution, he was taken to hospital.”
Rose and Nomi, an assistant professor of poetry at the
University of Texas in Dallas, have enjoyed a transatlantic relationship for three years.
They met days before Rose graduated after studying in America. Now, Rose has a teaching contract in the States and the couple split their year between there and Mull.
Rose has been on the Tobermory crew since 2015. Her grandad, John Lewis Leroy, served on the Dover RNLI lifeboat and his ashes were scattered by Tobermory’s Arun class lifeboat, Anne Lewis Fraser, 20 years ago.
The couple decided it would be fitting to bless their marriage on Tobermory’s Elizabeth Fairlie Ramsey lifeboat.
Coxswain David said: “Rose and Nomi are part of our lifeboat family and it was an honour to be part of their marriage blessing. All of us at the station wish them fair winds and following seas.”
Rose said: “Joining the Tobermory crew was one of the best things I’ve ever done and I’m so happy to see how the station has welcomed Nomi in as part of the family, too. Having our marriage blessed here has been really special to us.”