Distress at sea: Solo sailor rescued from danger zone after more than ten hours

It is a scenario no skipper would ever want to experience: on 26 July at 11.24 pm, a solo sailor was forced to send out a Mayday distress call after his yacht’s engine failed. The boat then drifted, unable to manoeuvre, towards the restricted zone of the Morecambe gas fields. The man was travelling from Douglas on the Isle of Man to Whitehaven in Cumbria when the weather conditions began to deteriorate.

His Majesty’s Coastguard alerted the RNLI station at Lytham St Annes. Just two minutes later, the volunteer rescue crew were called out. Following the pre-deployment briefing, the “Barbara Anne” set sail. At that point, the crew still had 22 nautical miles to go to reach the stricken yacht. According to the RNLI, a strong north-westerly wind of force five, with gusts of up to 24 miles per hour, was already blowing as they set out.

Battling the wind and waves

During the voyage, the wind continued to pick up, reaching force seven – with gusts of force eight, reaching up to 46 miles per hour. The sailor was nearly thrown overboard several times by the boat’s violent movements.

The yacht was first spotted by the vessel ‘Grampian Fortress’. However, the 58-metre-long support vessel, which is deployed to provide safety services at the Morecambe gas field, was unable to intervene directly due to the rough sea conditions. Instead, the crew tried to shield the sailing boat from the waves as best they could with the hull. The actual rescue, however, had to be carried out by the RNLI boat, which battled its way through waves up to five metres high.

Rescue for the solo sailor

When the “Barbara Anne” reached the sailing boat, the situation came to a dramatic head. According to the RNLI, the yacht was about 18 metres away from the gas drilling platforms.

See also:

• ​​Weather knowledge: Strong gusts out of the blue – how they form and how to handle them whilst sailing
• ​In practice: Ready to operate the radio with a licence
• ​YACHT Podcast: Mayday and Pan-Pan – how to make the correct radio calls at sea
• ​Life raft: How to transfer to it in an emergency at sea

The helmsman, Vinny Pedley, manoeuvred the lifeboat as close as possible to the stricken vessel. As the RNLI explains, the only realistic chance of rescue was to pass a towline and pull the boat out of the danger zone immediately. The sailor fought his way onto the foredeck under extreme conditions, even though the waves nearly swept him overboard again. He finally managed to secure the towline to the ‘Barbara Anne’. Pedley later said that if the line had not been secured in time, they would have had to consider rescuing the man and abandoning the yacht as a navigational hazard.

Several hours of towing through the storm

Once the vessel had been successfully secured, the next gruelling task began: the tow to Fleetwood Marina. Due to the heavy seas, the rescue boat ‘Barbara Anne’ had to repeatedly adjust its speed to suit the conditions. The journey through the storm and high waves took more than five hours.

It was not until around ten o’clock in the morning that the lifeboat and the yacht reached the mouth of the River Wyre. Help was already waiting there: the RNLI Fleetwood station had dispatched its D-class inshore lifeboat, the ‘Harbet’, with a crew of volunteers. The smaller lifeboat assisted with the difficult manoeuvre through the narrow lock into Fleetwood Marina.

After more than ten hours at sea, the operation was over. According to the RNLI, the solo sailor, who had been in extreme danger at one point, was brought safely ashore.