The volunteers at Kippford RNLI were paged just on Wednesday evening on the 2nd April to reports of a broken down motor yacht in the vicinity of Hestan Island.
The crew assembled at the lifeboat station and the Kippford inshore lideboat Ronnie Sinclair was launched just nine minutes after the pager request. The crew of three made best speed to Hestan Island where they quickly located the stricken vessel.
Although weather conditions were calm at Kippford the crew encountered strengthening easterly winds as they transited to Hestan Island. The tide was also rapidly falling so after speaking to yacht skipper and establishing that they were safe and well a decision was made to tow the yacht to a more sheltered anchorage off Hestan Island. After securing the anchor the Kippford volunteers returned to the lifeboat station.
The state of tide meant that a low water recovery operation was required. This is something the crew train for and the boat and shore teams were able to execute the recovery by taking the launch tractor further towards the river bed and the crew manually assisting the boat back onto the trailer. A low water recovery generates a lot of mud so the boat, tractor and crew were washed down on return to the station.
The Maritime and Coastguard Operations Centre in Belfast requested if a crew could be available to return to the yacht on the next high tide to assist the vessel to an appropriate safe harbour. The next tide was in the early hours of Thursday morning so the crew were awoken by their pagers at 1am to assemble once again at the lifeboat station.
The Kippford Lifeboat D-854 was launched at 1.25am with the same volunteer crew of three on board and returned to the yacht at anchor off Hestan Island. Once again conditions at the lifeboat station were calm and clear but force four easterly winds were creating swells of up one metre on scene. After a discussion with the yacht skipper and an assessment of the situation it was decided that the safest course of action was to tow the vessel to a pontoon in Kippford.
The tow commenced just before 2am and the yacht was safely moored at the Solway Yacht Club pontoons a little under an hour later. The skipper was thankful for the assistance which would allow him to safely inspect his yacht when daylight arrived.
Kippford Lifeboat Operations Manager, Gareth Jones, said: ‘The yacht skipper seemed to be very experienced and was well prepared for his journey. Unfortunately he suffered an engine issue which could not be resolved so he made the correct decision to request assistance via the Coastguard.’
‘Our volunteers at Kippford are always ready to drop what they are doing when the pagers sound and on this occasion were needed to launch twice due to the tide. We’re very grateful for the support of the local community to allow us to provide this lifesaving charity service in Kippford.’
Kippford RNLI were assisted by the Portling Coastguard Rescue team who attended the lifeboat station to provide support for the returning yacht if required.
