FRENCH YACHT FOUND BY EQUIPMENT Swanage, Dorset. At 8.5 on the morning of the 4th June, 1963, the coastguard informed the honorary secretary that the French yacht Stellar's engine had broken down twenty miles off Poole and the yacht needed help. At 9.5 the lifeboat R.L.P. was launched in a gentle north-easterly breeze and a slight sea.

It was high water. Using direction finding equipment for the first time, the life-boat found the Stellar with three people on board fourteen miles southsouth- east of Anvil Point. An Admiralty tug also left Portland to go to the help of the casualty. The motor fishing vessel Purbeck Isle took the Stellar in tow five minutes before the life-boat arrived, and the life-boat escorted the vessels and then returned to her station, arriving at 11.40..