Ruairi McSorely was rescued by the Fenit lifeboat after he had spent 12 hours in the sea. The crew spotted some bottlenose dolphins circling and this led them to him. The dolphins circling around him, apparently protecting him, were from the Moray Firth in Scotland, just visiting the Kerry region.
The first thing Ruairi said to the crew was: ‘I’ll not have to pay for this, will I?’ He had tried to swim to Mucklaghmore Rock, 9km out at sea. ‘I just jumped in, and that was it,’ was how he put it. ‘Later, when I saw these black tails in the water, I wasn’t sure were they dolphins or sharks. I thought maybe it wouldn’t have been the worst idea to have googled this before I jumped in.’
Wearing only swimming trunks, he was dangerously hypothermic. The weird thing is that Ruairi was already known worldwide as ‘Frostbit Boy’ because of a 2015 TV clip of him walking to school in snow. “You wouldn’t be long getting frostbit,” he said then in his strong Derry accent, and it went viral.
Ruairi later recorded a hilarious country single ‘The Girl for Me’ for a charity album.
The lifeboat coxswain said: ‘Another half an hour, and he was a goner.’ But Ruairi had his own take on it: ‘It was only a matter of going into hospital to heat up a bit. Other than that, I was fine.’
Check out Ruairi's viral hit below: