X boat used stranded on in rescue of youths rockLifeboat services are not always in heavy weather and not always to professional or amateur mariners, as a service by Douglas's Tyne this summer illustrated.

On a fine but cloudy August Sunday with little or no wind a 999 call to the Coastguard led to Sir William Hillary launching to help in the rescue of two youths trapped some 80ft up an outlying rock beneath steep cliffs at Dhoon Bay.

They had not appreciated either the steepness of the rock or the rising tide.

The rock was just over eight miles from the station and the Tyne was at the scene only half an hour after the pagers had been activated.

The foot of the more gentle seaward side was now covered by the tide and the landward face of the rock was too steep to descend leaving them trapped some 20ft from the top of the 100ft slab.

Coastguard cliff rescue team members scaled the steep inner face with the aid of ropes and the lifeboat's small inflatable X boat, which was the only boat able to reach the foot of the slab, was positioned beneath the youths. The twosurvivors were then clipped to a Coastguard and carefully lowered one at a time into the inflatable by the cliff rescue team. The two youths were then rowed ashore, unharmed but rather shaken by their experience..