The Walter and Elizabeth Groombridge Award for the most meritorious rescue by an inshore lifeboat crew in 2009 has been given to Whitstable Helm Jonathan Carter and Crew Members Tony Martin and Henry Thomson. The crew saved the life of a man who had fallen overboard from his yacht in a near gale, and was very close to drowning in rough seas. See the Lifeboat Winter 2009–10 for a full account of this rescue.