Lough Ree RNLI is advising people who hire boats this summer to keep between the markers on the lakes and not to go off track.
A significant number of the rescues attended by the lifeboat service each year are linked to boats ending up on rocks and becoming immobile.
Tom McGuire who is Press Officer for the service says the people who get into trouble will usually have strayed from the markers because they want to visit an area that looks interesting.
He says that interest can prove very costly because if the boat is hired, it usually means the deposit is lost because of damage to the bottom.
'They get their instructions before they start, but it's following those instructions, and sometimes the human nature of it is that someone sees a nice cove , and there's plenty of those coves around Lough Ree, and says look, we'd love to go in there for our picnic, or for our swim, and they just hang a right, or hang a left, and suddenly they're on rocks.You've got to stay between the markers on the lake , and the markers are there all the way down the lake for people.
I think the other thing for people to remember , particularly for the hire cruisers, a lot of those people , if they finish up on the rocks, they also lose their deposit.'
