Port St Mary Lifeboat Station - ILB Callouts 17th August 2001

Weather cloudy; visibility good; Wind E1

At 20:50 BST the owner and skipper of the 22 foot long Bayliner Trophy sports fishing boat, "Cair Vie" contacted Liverpool Coastguard to request assistance. The boat had two people on board and they had been angling close to the shore, off the Marble Quarry, Poyllvaish. They had tried to restart their main outboard engine (a two stroke 120 hp outboard with electric start) but it failed to start. Their 10 hp auxiliary outboard started but ran roughly before it also failed. It did however enable them to get away from the shore.

They checked fuel lines, etc but couldn't locate the fault. The tide set the boat drifting towards the Stack at Scarlett Point, so they dropped their anchor which after a little distance gripped into the bottom approx. 100 meters west of the Stack. There were no other boats in the vicinty to offer assistance hence the request for Lifeboat assistance.

With the seas calm it was decided to send the ILB with a crew of three to tow the boat back in. The ILB was launched at 21:10 BST and radio communications with the "Cair Vie" was established. With it being the edge of dark they left their navigation lights on to aid identification.

The ILB arrived alongside at 21:17 BST and found that one of the angling boats crew had already rigged a tow line, which was passed to the ILB. After Cair Vies' crew had hauled up their anchor, the tow back to Port St Mary, 2 miles away, began. This took twenty minutes. Once inside Port St Mary's outer harbour the tow line was shortened and the boat towed through the yacht moorings to the IOMYC slipway where the boat was going to be put back on its road trailer.

The ILB was rehoused and ready for service again at 21:55 BST.

Edited 18-Aug-2001