As waves hurled themselves at the narrow harbour entrance, two lifeboat crews needed to combine their skills to get a yacht to safety

A gale force 8 was lashing Newlyn Harbour as Coxswain Patch Harvey walked across the seafront on 14 June 2012. He noticed a yacht heading out across Mounts Bay: ‘I thought to myself, they must be mad!’ It wasn’t to be his last encounter with the vessel.

Later that afternoon, Falmouth Coastguard alerted Penlee Lifeboat Station to a yacht in difficulty, 12 miles south of Newlyn. Patch knew immediately which yacht it was, and paged his volunteers.

‘I knew I would need my most experienced crew members. When there is a south easterly blowing into the bay, conditions are tough.’ The Severn class lifeboat launched with six men and over 65 years’ experience onboard.

With the wind raging against them, they could just reach 18 knots once clear of the harbour. They located the yacht 45 minutes later, spotting its orange storm sail through hammering rain.

The 12m Change of Course was in a sorry state. The wind had torn down her jib and it was tangled around the keel, rudder and propeller. Her crew, a man and woman in their 60s, were entirely at the mercy of the elements.

The wind had risen to severe gale force 9, there was a 7m swell, and rain squalls were coming in thick and fast. Patch wanted to establish a tow but the yacht was beam-on to the elements and there was a risk of the lifeboat being blown onto her. There were also sails and ropes swirling in the water.

Patch skilfully manoeuvred as close as possible to the heaving yacht and tasked Second Coxswain David Pascoe with throwing a line across. ‘Some job that was!’ he recalls. On the first two attempts the rope was blown out of reach. On the third go, the yacht’s skipper managed to catch the rope but there was more trouble in store.

‘A couple of big waves hit the yacht, making her roll badly,’ Patch remembers. ‘The pair were in danger of being thrown over the side. It must have been pretty hairy for them – it didn’t look good.’

With the tow finally established, they began the uncomfortable 2½-hour return. But there was one final challenge: getting into the harbour. With waves continually breaking across the narrow entrance, the lifeboat and yacht could easily have been thrown against the harbour wall. Patch called the inshore crew for help.

The B class RIB duly met them with Will Treneer at the helm: ‘You wouldn’t have taken the inshore lifeboat out in any worse conditions – she was stretched to the limit of her capability. Slow and steady was the way of it.’

The plan was to attach a rope to the yacht’s stern so that the inshore lifeboat could hang behind, acting as a brake and rudder and keeping them straight. With an enormous backwash surging off the harbour wall, it took all of Will’s boathandling skills to keep clear of the flotsam.

Inshore Crew Member David Raymond jumped aboard the yacht to attach the rope: ‘Will put her alongside lovely, and I just launched over. I didn’t have any time to be nervous.’ The three craft were now linked: the all-weather lifeboat leading, the yacht in the middle, and the inshore lifeboat at the rear.

‘I headed for the gap in the harbour wall, and hoped for the best,’ Patch recalls. He timed it right, making it through just before a large breaker hit. He then used the inshore lifeboat to slow the yacht down, swinging her into the shelter of the outer sea wall and on to a mooring.

After 3½ hours, their ordeal over, the couple were taken to the lifeboat station for a cup of tea. They returned later with a bottle of whisky to thank the crew. It wasn’t their only thanks – a few weeks later the crews received a formal Letter of Appreciation from the RNLI’s Chief Executive.

Patch sums up: ‘We were all proud. It was definitely one of the most challenging jobs we’ve been on, just because of the weather. It’s why we train in all weathers. It was a really good team effort.’