Port St Mary Lifeboat Station - Callouts: 29 June 2001
Weather fresh;Visibility good; Wind SSW 5.
At 17:50 BST Liverpool Coastguard alerted the crew for the all weather lifeboat by pagers. 8 minutes later the Stations lifeboat "Gough Ritchie II", 14-26, left her moorings to go to the aid of the yacht "Kudusanga" with a crew of two. The 24 foot long yacht was on passage from Holyhead to Belfast when some 9 miles south west of the Calf of Man (approx. 13 miles SW of Port St Mary) its rudder started to break up. The yacht crew attempted to jury rig some steering by streaming ropes behind the yacht and they changed their course to make for the Island.
The lifeboat arrived on scene some 45 minutes later, after a short but 'bouncy' passage into the head-on sea. A tow line was quickly established and both craft started back for Port St Mary. However at 19:15 BST, due to the concerns of the yachtsman over the damage that the still partially attached rudder was doing to the hull of their yacht and the fact that the yacht was unable to maintain anything like a straight course, both craft stopped so that the yachts damaged rudder could be removed and also so that the lifeboat crew could pass a drogue along the tow line. The drogue was then rigged by the yachtsmen to be towed behind their craft to act like a rudder.
Due to the following choppy seas, the yacht kept wildly shearing away from a straight course; also due to the now ebbing tide both craft only managed to proceed at the rate of 4 knots. At around 22:10 BST the lifeboat arrived off Port St Mary breakwater with the yacht where the towline was shortened in and the yacht strapped alongside the lifeboat so that it could be manouvered alongside the breakwater.
Both yachtsman were wet but otherwise none the worse for their ordeal.
Edited 29-jun-01