The great orange case search...Red Bay's C class lifeboat was involved in an unusual incident last Autumn when she was involved in the hunt for four cases of oranges...

However, there was more than a little method to the madness, because the caseshad been specially jetisoned from HMS Arun off nearby Rathlin Island together with group of divers who were destined to drift around for some five hours! The object of the exercise was to discover where the oranges would go ashore and to monitor the drift of the long-suffering divers so that the tidal streams in the area could be monitored with more accuracy.

The scheme, which involved the Coastguard, Royal Engineer divers, HMS Arun, the Army Air Corps and the RAF in addition to the lifeboat was prompted by an incident last year when a German diver spent almost eight hours in the water, and a similar incident in which divers drifted for four hours before being picked up by a passing yacht.

The complicated tidal and wind influences off Rathlin and in the approaches to the North Channel made it very difficult to calculate from previously available material how far people would drift - and in fact the divers were swept no less than 14 miles from their predicted position in only four hours.

• During the exercise Red Bay lifeboat and Ballycastle coastguards were called to a real incident to recover a man from the bottom of a cliff..