Shallow water and unpredictable sandbanks present the East Coast lifeboatman with particular difficulties.

Mike Floyd looks at the situation around The Wash We all have our own mental picture of a lifeboat in action - often against a back-drop of a rugged, rock-strewn coastline battered by breaking seas.

Dangerous though these rugged coasts may be, at least a cliff or rock will stay in the same place through generations of lifeboatmen, and local knowledge, once acquired, will serve for a lifetime.

Other parts of our coastline may not have the drama of the West Country shores or Scottish cliffs but they are equally, and some say more, dangerous. On the low-lying East Coast the combined effects of wind and tide can sweep whole sandbars into new positions, close some channels completely and create new ones. Here a chart can be out of date before the ink is dry, buoys can be marking last year's shoal and local knowledge comes from daily investigation. And do not be mislead by sand.

Soft and yielding it may be on a holiday beach, but submerged and compacted by sea and tide it becomes rock hard - it is after all only powdered rock and soon resumes its original consistency.

A Westcountry yachtsman, transported to new cruising grounds, once remarked that his over-riding impression of the East Coast was that 'the bottom always seemed very close to the top,' adding that he never quite came to terms with running aground out of sight of land...

These hazards are more than obvious where the North Norfolk coast sweeps round, south and west, into the vast shallows which are The Wash, before becoming the Lincolnshire coast and heading back out to the north-east and the seaside resort of Skegness.

Along the shore huge expanses of sandy, seemingly safe, beach disappear under the rapidly flooding tide to trap the unsuspecting holidaymaker or fisherman, sometimes on the wrong side of a rill which could once be waded and is now teeming with deep and fast-moving water. There have been several such tragedies along this shore, just as there have been losses at sea where shallow banks and bars and the breaking seas they create have taken their toll on passing vessels.

Lifeboat crews from Wells-next-the-sea, Hunstanton and Skegness cover this treacherous area, each station having its own foibles, its own problems to contend with.

The character of this stretch of coast is the more obvious when approaching from the east. At Sheringham, the 'flank station' to the east, the lifeboat station is wedged tightly between a low cliff and the steep shingle shoreline, its slipway exposed to anything the North Sea can throw at it. Even on a July day the seas from a moderate northerly can send shivers down the spine of the visitor as they break solidly on the Atlantic's launching ramp. But here at least there is deep water offshore, the scour of the tides threatening to erode the coastline and sweeping the debris away both east and west to deposit on someone else's patch.

Away from Sheringham the road climbs and dips along the low cliffs until, quite suddenly, descending into the nomans- land of the salt marshes. As it heads towards the large, shallow harbour of Blakeney, tucked behind its long, curved finger of sand the solid land begins to ease away to the south leaving just the man-made sea wall to define an otherwise very blurred border between land and sea.

There is no lifeboat station at Blakeney now, the last boat being withdrawn more than 60 years ago.

and its complement of pleasure boats, small fishing boats and holiday makers is looked after by either Sheringham's Atlantic or the Mersey from Wells. In its operational life Blakeney too suffered from the shifting sands of the area - its 1862-built boathouse having to be moved in 1867 because of 'encroachment by the sea' and a replacement built in 1898.

Threading through the twists and turns of the sea-wall road with the sea distant to the north beyond the marshes brings the lifeboat seeker to Wells-next-the-Sea, a tiny rift in the coast fringed with low lying sand dunes and marsh.

Once a busy port, Wells is now home to a small fishing fleet and the haunt of holidaymaker . As with many East Coast harbours there are in fact two Wells - and which one you see depends on the state of the tide when you arrive.

To the low-water visitor Wells is a sheltered quayside, well inland and protected by vast sandbanks of quite reasonable height. Small boats lie deep between the banks, barely afloat at their moorings or sitting on the sand, and fishing boats lean on their staging for support. Far away the new lifeboat station stands guard at the harbour entrance, perched on a sandy spit and separated from the sheltering banks by the narrow channel to the quay. Just offshore the sea frets against the bar, a line of surf marking the shallowest section.

Return at high water and a very different Wells greets you. The small quay looks vulnerable and exposed as a moderate northerly sets the fishing vessels creaking against their supports and the yachts tugging at their buoys. Now all that separates the quay from the North Sea are some rather insubstantial shallows and the lifeboat station seems alone, exposed and far out to sea.

In the boathouse the station's Mersey and D class wait for business, with their launching site varying as widely with the state of the tide as the town's appearance.

At high water either boat can be trundled down into the deep water of the channel just outside the boathouse doors. At low water? Coxswain Mechanic Allen Frary leans over to the window and points to some distant sand dunes, 'over there, towards Holkham Gap', It looks a long way. 'Not too bad, a couple of miles I should think...' Allen also confirms the changing nature of the coast, pointing out how the bar has built up steadily over the past few years, migrating gently eastward. Around the station too the sands are causing some problems. Quite a lot of preventative measures have been carried out to stabilise the sands since the boathouse was substantially rebuilt in 1990, but more work will be needed soon to prevent the small inlet by the doors from silting up.

The boathouse has been out on the point by the entrance since 1880, the year of the lifeboat disaster which claimed thirteen lives. The old boathouse, tucked into the corner by the quay, is now the harbour office - a suitable base for harbourmaster Graham Walker, who was also the lifeboat coxswain until his retirement last year.

Wells has had a D class inflatable since the very early days of inshore lifeboats, the first arriving in 1963. The D's quick response is frequently put to the test, as rescuing people trapped on the sands opposite the boathouse has become almost routine, with the lifeboat making three outings a day on occasion! A little to the west Brancaster mirrors Blakeney in its general shape and feel, if a little smaller, forming one of only a very few interruptions in a vast sweep of tidal sand which stretches from Wells to Hunstanton.

Hunstanton is home to another Atlantic, her base the original boathouse built in 1867 in Old Hunstanton - a place with a very different character to the seaside town of nearby Hunstanton. Used as a fisherman's store from 1931, when the station closed, until it reopened in 1979 with an inshore lifeboat, the elegant building has been suitable modernised and now has a first floor crew room. Hiding behind the first row of dunes and tucked in behind some beach huts a sandy track leads to the beach itself - at low water this a very wide beach, at high water a very narrow one...

The original D class gave way to an Atlantic in 1982 At this point the bulge of the Norfolk coast has turned back on itself to such an extent that Hunstanton has an unusual claim to fame - it is said to be only place on the East Coast where you can watch the sunset over the sea! The Atlantic works along the coast both into the shallow drying areas of The Wash and back round to Brancaster, where it meets Wells' territory, and also out over the numerous sand banks and narrow channels of The Wash. Although the commercial shipping using the ports at the head of the Wash generates some custom most of the Atlantic's work involves the 'Summer trade' - small boats on passage and holiday makers in difficulties as the flood tide sweeps across the wide beaches.

Although Skegness, on the opposite side of the wide estuary, is some 70 miles away by road it is only about 13 by sea, and the two stations often find themselves working together.

The speed and shallow draft of Hunstanton's Atlantic complementing the radar and VHP direction finding equipment of Skegness' bigger Mersey. Station Honorary Secretary David Harrison tells of the time when crew members of the Atlantic took the lifeboat's radar reflector with them as they walked across a sandbank to a casualty in thick fog - with the Mersey lying off and tracking them on its radar! The north-western shore of The Wash is low lying and quite sparsely populated, with no inlet of any note until Gibraltar Point is reached, some three or four miles south of Skegness. Here a small creek provides shelter for some yachts - and a place where Skegness' Mersey can take casualties - if the tide serves.

Skegness' lifeboat station can hardly be missed - it's slap-bang in the middle of the esplanade and following the main road in to town takes you straight to it.

In Summer the whole area is very busy with holiday makers and the 1990 - built boathouse is designed to take advantage of the crowds, with good viewing facilities , a souvenir shop and strategically placed collecting boxes.

Here not only the off lying sandbanks are on the move; the beach too changes regularly, or at least as regularly as the last hard blow.

It is almost a cliche to say that all lifeboat stations are different - but Skegness goes a long way to proving the point. Here the station draws its own charts! Coxswain Paul Martin takes the Mersey to sea at regular intervals and runs along predetermined courses with the recording echo sounder running.

The lifeboat's satellite navigation system has a 'differential' facility for pinpoint accuracy and by incorporating information on the exact height of tide at the time (gleaned from a conveniently near recording buoy) Paul sets to and amends his local chart.

One look at the 'new' chart is enough to convince any sceptic - there are channels on the printed version which simply do not exist any more, and many of the off lying sandbanks are well south of where they belong! The beach too gets similar treatment, but here a foot patrol establishes where the hollows and soft spots are and a plastic-coated board on the boathouse wall becomes the chart. Suitable transits are noted down so that the lifeboat can launch at exactly the right spot - one where the Talus tractor can bring the carriage for recovery without submerging in a hollow or getting stuck in a soft spot. And all this is not just done on a whim, Skegness' tractor had been well and truly bogged down in soft patches several times in the past! The station's D class spends most of its time on the proverbial 'Summer trade', with airbed recovery in the prevailing offshore winds a speciality, while the Mersey has the normal mix of business. The shallows offshore can catch out pleasure boats on passage along the coast and there is fishing and commercial traffic further offshore.

So, shallow waters and shifting sands are the name of the game on this stretch of coast, and anyone who has experienced the shiver of fear as a keel graunches on sand far out to sea, who has experienced the short, sharp seas kicked up by a hard breeze in shallow waters or who has encountered the breaking overfalls of a strong tide sweeping over a sharp edge to a sandbank will appreciate the difficulties of lifeboat crews working this unspectacular but nonetheless dangerous patch of water..