Eastbourne RNLI crew save boat stranded 12 miles from harbour

A boat was saved by an RNLI crew after it suffered a mechanical failure 12 miles off Eastbourne’s coast.

The RNLI was paged at 4.30pm on November 14 after the 14-metre boat was left stranded 12 miles east of Sovereign Harbour.

Coxswain Mark Sawyer, in charge of ‘The Diamond Jubilee’ lifeboat during the incident, said, “Once we arrived on scene we carried out a risk assessment and decided the safest thing to do was take over the tow from the other vessel and tow the broken down vessel to the nearest safe harbour which was Sovereign Harbour.”

The volunteer crew confirmed they had successfully recovered the boat and its passengers.

A spokesperson for the RNLIA said, “Our Volunteer Crew were paged on Sunday 14th November.

“They were requested to launch the All Weather Lifeboat and tasked to assist a 14 metre power boat that had suffered mechanical failure.

“Once the Lifeboat was on scene a tow line was attached and the casualty vessel towed back into the safety of Sovereign Harbour.”

“The lifeboat entered the locks just before 7pm before assisting the broken down vessel into the harbour and to a pontoon before refuelling and getting the all-weather lifeboat ready to launch again.”