Save Our Pot Plants Margate's Mersey class lifeboat Leonard Kent was called to another sinking incident in the South East Division, this time on Boxing Day 1992.

The elderly 35ft motor cruiser Norman, with three people aboard (who had been likened to new age travellers of the sea) had left Essex bound across the Thames Estuary forSandwich in Kent. She had already been reported as having grounded on two separate ocassions in the previous five days and had no radio aboard.

When she began to take water she was fortunate in being spotted by a fishing vessel, which informed the coastguards, who scrambled a helicopter and asked for the lifeboat to be launched.

The helicopter took off the three crew and when the lifeboat arrived two crew members were put aboard to attempt a tow. However the vessel began to sink underthem and they were taken off again just before she foundered. One reported that there were several pot plants in the cockpit, adding that 'it was a good thing the incident hadn't happened in the summer, when the add i tional top hamper of the foliage would ha ve had an adverse effect on stability'!.