St Mary’s RNLI out twice as two yachts drag ashore off Tresco

One yacht on the rocks would have been enough to break the night. St Mary’s RNLI got two, on the same tide, in the same freshening wind, a few hundred metres apart off Tresco.

The pagers went at quarter past midnight on 5 August and the crew did not get back on the slip until four in the morning. Between the two calls, five people were plucked off, coaxed off, or helped to sit tight aboard boats that the north-westerly had pushed onto the shore.

The first call at New Grimsby Sound

The crew were paged at 0015 and sent to New Grimsby Sound, the stretch of water between Tresco and Bryher, where a yacht with three people on board had dragged ashore onto the rocky shore as the wind freshened from the north-west.

The Tresco Coastguard Rescue Team were tasked alongside the lifeboat and reached the yacht first. It was aground, and aground firmly enough that they were able to help the three people ashore over the bow.

By the time the lifeboat arrived on scene there was little left to do. The three had already been taken to the waiting room on the quay, so with the situation in hand the lifeboat was stood down.

Back out before the boat was even ashore

That should have been the end of it. As the boarding boat was being recovered up the slip at 0145, the boathouse phone rang. Falmouth Coastguard wanted the lifeboat back in the water.

This time the call was to Old Grimsby Sound, on the other side of Tresco, where a second yacht with two people on board had also dragged its anchor and gone ashore. It had ended up on Lump of Clay Ledge, just off Blockhouse beach.

The crew launched the Y boat, the small inflatable daughter boat carried aboard the lifeboat, and two crew went in to assess the scene. They helped set a second anchor for the yacht, the idea being that once the tide flooded back in, the boat would float clear and swing off the ledge into deeper water.

The two people aboard asked to stay with their yacht. With conditions moderating slowly through the early hours, the lifeboat accepted that, recovered the Y boat, and turned for home. The lifeboat was back at the station at St Mary’s at 0400.

The long way round Bryher

The track from both trips, shown on the screenshot the station shared, tells its own story about a night working around a falling tide. With the water ebbing towards low water, the shallow channels between the islands were closing off, so the passage out and back ran the long way, around the back of Bryher.

The crew on both shouts were Pete Hicks, Jimmy Hoddinott, Paul Smith, Truan Hicks, Dan Moulson, Joel Ware and Archie Hicks.

Both yachts refloated on the flood

There was better news by daylight. In an update from the two yachts, the station confirmed both had been successfully refloated that morning as the tide flooded back in, exactly as the second anchor had been set up to allow.

📷Screenshot of the St Mary's lifeboat tracks for both callouts, out and around the back of Bryher to Tresco - Credit: St Mary's RNLI Lifeboat Station.