Valentia, Co. Kerry. At 8.30 on the morning of the 26th of February, 1961, the honorary secretary was asked by the local medical officer if the life-boat would take the county surgeon and his assistants from Cahirciveen to Valentia Island as a patient on the island needed an emergency amputation. Because of the weather no other suitable boat was available. At 9.30, when the life-boat Peter and Sarah Blake, on temporary duty at the station, put out, there was a south-westerly gale with a correspond- ing sea and the tide was flooding. The life-boat embarked the medical party and landed them at Valentia at eleven o'clock. She stood by at Valentia quay until 4.15, when the surgeon and his assistants were embarked again. The life- boat took them back to Cahirciveen and reached her station at five o'clock..