Source: Maritime and Coastguard Agency
On Halloween night, a Royal National Lifeboat Institution team battled Force 10 winds to save a 40-foot yacht that was taking on water just two miles off Porthleven, a town at England’s southwestern tip.
The yacht with a crew of eight sent out a mayday call that was received by His Majesty’s Coastguard, which asked the Ivan Ellen, a 56-foot RNLI lifeboat with an all-volunteer crew to respond. The nearby weather station reported winds gusting up to 75 knots.
The Ivan Ellen got underway in eight minutes and headed out into the storm. When they reached the yacht, the conditions were too rough to transfer crew over to try and pump out the boat. Instead, Ivan Ellen contacted the sailboat’s skipper over VHF to evacuate the yacht’s crew, only to learn that the sailboat did not have enough safety gear on board for all eight passengers.
Meanwhile, the yacht had begun to drift dangerously close to shore. Two RNLI crew members went out onto the deck and on their first try got a tow rope established to move the yacht into deeper waters. When that tow rope parted, the yacht drifted to within a half a mile of shore.
When the skipper of the yacht reported that a broken port side window was now letting in water, the RNLI team requested a helicopter. A second attempt got the tow rope reconnected, the helicopter crew rescued all eight passengers, and the Ivan Ellen towed the yacht back to the harbor.
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