ADRIFT FOR THIRTY-ONE HOURS Minehead, Somerset. At 3.30 on the afternoon of the 23rd May, 1963, the coxswain informed the honorary secretary that he had seen the cabin cruiser Sea Flight displaying a distress signal.

There was a light variable wind with a slight sea. The life-boat Sarah Ann Austin, on temporary duty at the station, was launched at 3.50 on a flood tide.

She took the Sea Flight in tow to Minehead and returned to her station, arriving at 5.30. It was later learnt that when the Sea Flight, on passage from Worcester to Ilfracombe, was in mid-channel at 9.30 on the morning of the 22nd May her engine failed. She drifted out of control for the next thirty-one hours, and by one o'clock on the afternoon of the 23rd May she was some two to three miles off the Somerset coast in smooth water.

Two of her crew set off in a dinghy for help and reached the shore two hours later. In the meantime however the vessel had drifted within sight of Minehead..