You haven't got a cat's chance in hell of achieving anything in those boats' said one local, smiling knowingly as he looked at the HNLI's collection of D class lifeboats...To add further concern, a boatman with 20 years' experience of navigating African rivers shook his head in disbelief at the conditions surrounding them, 'I've never seen anything like this' he said.

Nothing could have been better calculated to undermine the confidence of the RNLI Mozambique rescue team as they prepared to take a medical reconnaissance mission to a remote area inaccessible by road or air.

The odds against success were indeed daunting.

They were being asked to sail for 80 miles without a chart up a river that had burst its banks and divided into many unknown channels.It was flowing at 10 knots, so if an engine broke down the boat would be swept away downstream at an alarming rate and, while they wondered how they would survive an air temperature reaching 130 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of the river itself was even more worrying. The water that would be sucked into their engine cooling systems was itself over 100 degrees.

Crocodiles The RNLI crews and their partners from the UK Fire Service Search and Rescue Team were already aware of the dangers from crocodiles, hippos and poisonous snakes.

They had been warned about anti-personnel mines left over from Mozambique's civil war and, a former South African special forces soldier who had planted some of those mines himself, told them to be especially careful of floating trees.

'We used to hide mines in the trees and run We used to hide mines in the trees and run tripwires down the trunks to the ground.' tripwires down the trunks to the ground,' he told them. 'That way, when the enemy chose a tree toshelter from the sun we could take out an entire squad.' Faced with this catalogue of reasons why their mission would fail the leader of the RNLI's eightman mission, Ian Canavan, Scots-born training divisional Inspector (Ireland), might have been expected to think of some other way of helping.

But the 'impossible' had already been achieved through the logistical triumph of getting the party, with their seven boats, mobilised from a standing start at home and transported to the beach at the mouth of the Buzi in five days.

'In African terms this was record breaking stuff,' said Ian, still marvelling weeks later at how the RNLI, the Fire Service and the Department for International Development pulled it ail together so quickly.

Overheating Ian reasoned that even if the engines frequently broke down through overheating they were unlikely to break down at the same time and, while one boat's stalled engine cooled down, another would tow it.lnhambane 130.000 African helicopters NEWS But 20 minutes after a fleet of four boats set off from their base on the delta of the Buzi river, it looked as if the prophets of doom might have been right. First one engine, then another overheated and stopped.

In the fast flowing chocolate brown torrent they could not see the bottom.

So difficult was it to spot the channel that they constantly ran aground. After less than four hours they had made only 16 miles and already they had used up more than half of their fuel supplies.

Running at such high temperatures was using up fuel much faster than at home.

Nervous They pulled up on a beach to reassess the situation. It was so hot the soles of Mike Kingston's boots melted. The boat sponsons were too hot to sit on, so they plastered them with mud a la hippo' to cool them.

Ian said his brain felt as if it was cooking and took him a long time to work things out. They needed more water - each man was drinking up to ten litres a day - and more fuel. They managed to get a message out via an ITN helicopter that buzzed them.

They failed to reach their destination that night.

Three men spent a nervous night in a tent near the beach guarding the boats, while the remainder of 'A bright red flash was followed by an orange flash and the boat went up,' the team slept in a Catholic mission in the bush.

Next day, further up the river, a South African helicopter found them and landed more supplies.They used a personal distress flare to signal to it but, when one of the crew tried to dispose of it safely, it ignited petrol vapour and set fire to one of the lifeboats.

'A bright red flash was followed by an orange flash and the boat went up,' said Ian.

Three of the guys hit it very quickly with fire extinguishers, but one of them had to jump overboard and, after a few seconds, it went up with a whoosh and sank'.

At least, as someone looking on the bright side remarked, it kept the crocs away.

Continued over...In all they visited six settlements with a combined population of 10,000 people, many of them desperately short of food and in poor health. In each settlement the French woman doctor and the logistician they had carried up the river made rapid assessments of what was needed so that later they could arrange for aid to reach the priority areas.

They were in a pretty poor state,' said Ian.

'The further up the river we went the worse people were. It was very thought provoking.' He has no doubt that the expedition saved lives. While one team was on the Buzi river, their colleagues were training the locals back at their base in Beira how to use the lifeboats they left behind.

Once back in Beira they looked forward to a much deserved beer with the local expert who had predicted their failure. A power cut deprived them of this satisfying experience but, a fortnight after their arrival, they flew back to Britain knowing that they had played a small but vital part in the international relief mission.Desperately needed medical relief was brought to 10,000 people in villages marooned by floodwater, thanks to the RNLI's Mozambique rescue mission.

Crews ferried a doctor and logistician from the French medical agency Medians du Monde to areas that had been written off as 'impossible' because helicopters could not land there and they were inaccessible by road.

The further up the Buzi river the team went the worse the condition of the people became, until they reached the settlements around the village of Goonda, where the hospital had been destroyed by cyclone and flood. Starvation was beginning to get a grip and disease was rife.

The medics were able to make rapid assessments of their needs so that aid teams conning out from France could be sent to priority areas.

Before the RNLI left they handed over their remaining lifeboats and gave special training to personnel from aid agencies and the Mozambique maritime administration..