'I thought it was thunder; this tornado making its way toward me': Watch freak weather event hit Cork harbour
Gavin Higgins was watching the TV in his home, a converted 60-year-old former RNLI boat called The Lilly Wainwright, when a loud boom alerted him to what he described as a tornado bearing down on him from across Drake’s Pool in Crosshaven. Image taken from a screengrab of a video of the moment shared on the Crosshaven Notice Board on Facebook.
A man living on a houseboat in Cork has described seeing a tornado coming straight toward him in a freak event on Tuesday afternoon.
Gavin Higgins was watching the TV in his home, a converted 60-year-old former RNLI boat called The Lilly Wainwright, when a loud boom alerted him to what he described as a tornado bearing down on him from across Drake’s Pool in Crosshaven.
“It was a lovely day and I thought it was thunder, but I came up into my cabin and I saw this tornado making its way toward me.
“The boat beside me left the water and hit the back end of my boat."
He caught the event on video and shared it social media.
“I do swear on the video, unfortunately, but you would too if you saw a tornado coming at you,” Mr Higgins said.
The retired prison governor, who hails from Doncaster in Yorkshire, has lived in the Lilly Wainwright for five years, since he bought it in the boatyard in Crosshaven.
“She’s a self-righting lifeboat, she used to take on two tons of water and pump it from one side to the other. She’s a beautiful thing. She’s 15 ton of mahogany,” he said.
He fell in love with the boat when he saw it and the name plaque sealed the deal.
“She’s called The Lilly Wainwright. You can leave money to the RNLI and a man called John Wainwright did just that and they called it after his daughter Lilly.
“There’s a sign on the side of the boat says: ‘A Yorkshireman John Wainwright paid for this boat’, and when I saw it in the boatyard in Crosshaven I said ‘That’s the boat for me, a Yorkshireman’.”
Despite his soft English accent, he said he is completely Irish and loves his houseboat home.
“I always wanted to retire to Crosshaven and now I have. I’m at home here, although I don’t know why God sent a tornado after me!
“With a name like Higgins, you couldn’t get more Irish. I am Irish, me father was from Crosshaven, me grandparents were from Crosshaven.
“They left her in the 1950s to go to Yorkshire, because there was work there then, and there was nothing here then, it wasn’t even a fishing village then, now it’s like Marbella here.
“With a name like Higgins, I’m probably related to the president!”
He laughed heartily when told he’d better be careful, lest he get the nickname Hurricane Higgins.
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