Hire boat runs aground at Falmouth’s Penarrow Point

A Saturday evening on the water turned into a proper shout when a self-drive hire boat came to a stop on the rocks at Penarrow Point, and it took an eight-minute dash from the boathouse to sort it out.

The call comes in

Falmouth Coastguard took a call from the occupants of a self-drive hire boat that had run aground at Penarrow Point, on the western shore of the Fal Estuary. It was just before 6.15pm on Saturday 22 August.

Falmouth’s lifeboat station launched its Atlantic 85 lifeboat, Robina Nixon Chard, at 6.22pm. The crew were on scene eight minutes later, at 6.30pm.

Two crews on the rocks

Falmouth Coastguard Rescue Team were tasked alongside the lifeboat and were also on scene, checking on the welfare of everyone aboard the grounded boat.

Between the two crews, it didn’t take long to establish that nobody needed rescuing in the traditional sense. The occupants were safe and well, and the boat itself was high and dry on the rocks, going nowhere until its owners came to collect it later.

Released within the hour

With nothing more for the lifeboat to do, it was released from service at 6.35pm and back at the boathouse by 6.45pm, a round trip of well under half an hour.

It’s the kind of shout the RNLI crews at Falmouth turn out for often through the summer months, as visitors unfamiliar with the estuary’s rocks and shifting tides find themselves caught out. The tide that put the boat there will, in time, be the one that floats it off again.

📷Credit: RNLI