Driven into every scout from their first day of Beavers is the motto: ‘Be Prepared’.Four teenagers from 5th Port Dollymount Sea Scouts in north Dublin are good examples of this as, with quick thinking, they saved a man stricken in the water on Sunday afternoon.A man came running up the beach from the nearby wooden bridge shouting to the scouts, who were taking their rowing boat out of the water at the back of their den on Bull Island, that someone was trapped under the bridge and was at risk of being swept out to sea.The scouts quickly relaunched a skiff and Aoibheann Conlon (17), Laura Daly (17) and brothers Oisín and Gavin Weadick (both 16) rowed to the scene of the emergency.“It all happened so quickly, we didn’t have time to think about it as it was happening,” said Daly.“We weren’t panicked,” Gavin Weadick told The Irish Times. “We were down here doing a leadership course, and had been doing man overboard drills earlier, so we were ready.”The skiff was coxed by Jill Pitcher Farrell, the former chief scout of Ireland, who was helping to run the leadership course for older scouts.“The guy was clinging on to a bridge pole, so we pointed the boat towards him. Aoibheann reacted really well, she was in the back of the boat holding on to him,” she said.Pulling a fully grown person into the boat is a difficult job, Pitcher Farrell said, so “Oisín jumped into the back of the boat, and between the two of them, they were able to roll the man into the boat”.[ Dún Laoghaire swimmers defiant despite water quality warning: ‘I’ve done worse things for me than swimming in the sea’Opens in new window ]5th Port Dollymount Sea Scouts’ sailing boats near the Bull Wall bridge. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni