Bank Holiday weekend 'busiest yet' for Yorkshire lifeboat crews

One incident saw Whitby RNLI called out at 5.45am yesterday alongside with a fire appliance and the coastguard to prevent a boat from fully sinking in the harbour close to New Quay Road.

A small fishing vessel was found to be almost completely underwater in the Dock End and it was quickly established that no-one was on board.

The vessel was moved into an upright position and fire crews and the RNLI began to pump water out using portable pumps

Coastguards monitored the vessel to ensure no fuel or oil was leaking from it and a cordon was set up. The pumping operation successfully re-floated the vessel and it was towed to the marina slipway to be inspected.

The first call-out of the weekend for the all-weather lifeboat came on Friday after a yacht suffered engine failure two miles east of Ravenscar.

The lifeboat was launched at 7.23pm to tow the stricken vessel back to harbour, returning just after 9pm.

On Saturday, the volunteer crew were paged at 12.25pm to a woman with a head injury after her yacht ran aground near the Upgang Ravine.

The woman was taken in the inshore lifeboat to the harbour to a waiting ambulance.

Soon afterwards the lifeboat was launched to a report that a casualty was in distress near the water at Sandsend. The boat waited on standby while police and coastguard dealt with the incident.

Station mechanic Richard Dowson said: “It is typical when there is sunny weather and more people out on the water that we expect more call-outs, this has definitely been the busiest weekend of the year for us so far.

“The call-outs have been fairly straightforward in good conditions and we are pleased that there has been a good outcome to each rescue.

“We’d like to thank the local police and coastguard for their help and cooperation on some of the incidents and also our volunteer crew who have had a busy weekend aboard our two lifeboats.”