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Buckie lifeboat tows drifting yacht to safety


By Alan Beresford

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A DRIFTING yacht sparked the launch of Buckie's RNLI lifeboat yesterday evening.

The small yacht is taken alongside the William Blannin to be brought to safe harbour in Buckie. Picture: Craig Gibson/RNLI Buckie
The small yacht is taken alongside the William Blannin to be brought to safe harbour in Buckie. Picture: Craig Gibson/RNLI Buckie

The William Blannin put to sea at 6.30pm on Wednesday, October 27 to take over the tow and recovery to safe harbour of a drifting yacht which was posing a hazard to navigation.

The yacht, which had been reported by the Coastguard as "adrift with no crew aboard" a couple of days previously, was spotted by a guard vessel supporting offshore wind farm operations in the Moray Firth.

She was taken in tow heading for Buckie, but the guard vessel was unable to enter the harbour at low tide.

Buckie lifeboat’s volunteer crew were tasked to complete the recovery by taking over the tow approximately a mile offshore and manoeuvring the yacht to a berth in Buckie Harbour.

Coxswain Davie Grant took full advantage of the flat calm conditions and absence of urgency or risk to life to optimise the training value of the tasking.

He said: “I maximised the number of new and inexperienced crew members taken to sea for the job – it was an ideal training opportunity, but with the added reality of an unmanned yacht rather than a helpful deck-crew on board the casualty vessel, such as we might have had in a normal training scenario.

"An ideal opportunity to practice textbook procedures, and the crew performed admirably.”

The lifeboat returned to her berth at 8pm


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