HAD BROKEN BOOM Later again on the same day, at 9.5 p.m., the coastguard told the honorary secretary that a yacht was firing flares about half a mile south of the Needles.

The tide was rising with a rough sea and strong south-westerly breeze. At 9.23 the life-boat The Earl and Countess Howe put out and found the yawl Pagan with a broken boom. The man aboard was suffering from concussion and his wife could not start the engine. The second coxswain of the life-boat boarded the yawl and she was towed back to Yarmouth. The lifeboat returned to her station shortly after midnight..