Three girls in a dinghy towed ashore by the Whitstable RNLI lifeboat crew

Three girls, aged 17, 16 and 11 years, were be towed ashore by Whitstable RNLI lifeboat after their 10ft dinghy broke down with engine trouble off the Seaview Caravan Park, Swalecliffe on Thursday afternoon.

The lifeboat crew launched at 2.43pm and located the three people and their craft, a mirror dinghy, 600m offshore.

They took them under tow to the launching ramp at the camp where the parents, who had had them under observation, and the Herne Bay Coastguard Unit were waiting.

All three had taken safety precfautions and were wearing lifejackets.

The lifeboat was launched later in the day at 5.57pm following a report of three children on the cliffs with one of them possibly stuck, at Warden Springs on the Isle of Sheppey. The lifeboat had reached the Columbine Spit Buoy approximately two thirds of the way to the scene when it was reported the children were safe and the lifeboat was ‘stood down’ to return to station along with other emergency services who were also proceeding to the scene.

Notes to editors

The Whitstable lifeboat station was established in 1963 by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and is one of 235 lifeboat stations around the shores of Great Britain and Ireland.

The volunteer crews provide a maritime search and rescue service for the Kent coast. They cover the area between the Kingsferry Bridge on the Swale, in the west, around the south-eastern side of Sheppey and along the coast through Whitstable and Herne Bay to Reculver in the east and outwards into the Thames Estuary.

The station is equipped with an Atlantic 75 lifeboat named Oxford Town and Gown in recognition of the fact that she was paid for by the people of Oxford after a fund raising campaign by the Oxford Branch of the RNLI.

She is what is known as a rigid inflatable inshore lifeboat, the boat’s rigid hull being topped by an inflatable sponson or tube. The lifeboat is 7.5m long and the twin 70hp engines give her a top speed of 32 knots with an endurance of 3 hours. She carries a crew of 3.

RNLI media contacts
• Chris Davey, Volunteer Lifeboat Press Officer, Whitstable Lifeboat Station.
07741 012004/ nativephoto@hotmail.com
• Tim Ash, RNLI Public Relations Manager (London/East/South East)
0207 6207426 / 07785 296252 / tim_ash@rnli.org.uk
• Philly Byrde, RNLI Press Officer (London/East/South East)
0207 6207425 / 07786 668825 / philly_byrde@rnli.org.uk
• For enquiries outside normal business hours, contact the RNLI duty press officer on 01202 336789