Fleetwood lifeboat coxswain says yacht duo had lucky escape after 'horrendous' rescue mission

Fleetwood RNLI's Tony Cowell took part in the dramatic rescue on Friday after the yacht, which had got into trouble, was reported 20 miles from port.

The vessel was travelling from Plymouth when it sent an SOS north of Rhyl in North Wales on Thursday night.

The yacht had lost all power and radio communications and the two men onboard only had a hand held radio and a phone to contact officials.

A Welsh lifeboat was launched to find the yacht, but a later telephone call revealed it had drifted north towards the Fylde coast, with a lifeboat from the RNLI station in Fleetwood launched at 5.25am on Friday.

Tony, who volunteers for the search and rescue service, described the conditions during the rescue as 'horrendous'.

He said: "It was a very horrible morning at sea. We had to fight with six metre swells and 40mph winds so as you can imagine it was horrendous.

"But the crew handled it really well. When we got to the yacht, the men had already been given an anchor from an off-shore supply tugboat, Vos Pathfinder, as there was concern it could have drifted into the wind farm."

"Our main focus was getting the yacht towed away safely and away from the wind farms but because of the conditions we couldn't use a short tow as there could have been risk to the men.

Tony said the two men, described as being in their 30s, were 'experienced' skippers.

He added: "The yacht had suffered from mechanical and electrical problems so there is nothing they could have done apart from call for rescue.

"It's a 32 foot yacht so they were frightened to put up the sails up in fear of it capsizing. They had a really lucky escape and apart from being cold and wet they had no injuries.

"It could have been a whole lot worse if they had struck the wind farm."

The rescue mission took around six hours and finished when the yacht was handed over to Fleetwood Coastguard at Fleetwood Marina at around midday.