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Lifeboat spends seven hours at sea on two separate shouts

RNLI Kessock come under The Kessock Bridge with fishing vessel alongside
RNLI Kessock come under The Kessock Bridge with fishing vessel alongside

A lifeboat spent seven hours at sea on two separate call-outs in the Moray Firth.

The crew was first tasked with rescuing a fishing boat grounded a mile east of the Kessock Bridge on Thursday evening.

And just one minute after returning to base at North Kessock the crew were called back out to assist in a missing person search on the shores of the Moray Firth.

The crew was first paged to help the Marigold at 6.30pm on Thursday.

A full crew were already at the North Kessock lifeboat station so were able to launch quickly in flat calm conditions.

The Marigold had earlier made her way along the Caledonian Canal and was continuing onwards towards Arbroath.

The 56ft vessel suffered steering failure and ran aground one mile east of the Kessock Bridge.

Arriving at the scene, volunteer helmsman Dougie Grant established that there were no injuries to the two man crew but the tide was too low to try and safely refloat the boat.

The lifeboat crew helped drop the undamaged fishing boat’s anchor and waited alongside for the tide to rise.

Mr Grant said: “My worry was that with the weight of the boat and list she had while aground she may have inflicted serious damage on herself, by bursting one of her planks.

“We had the pump ready to start clearing any ingress of water to the casualty vessel should that happen.”

The lifeboat left the scene at 10pm to change crew and with the tide rising they were able to refloat the Marigold when it returned at around 10.45pm.

The lifeboat took the vessel alongside to provide steering for both vessels back to Inverness Harbour, where the Marigold was safely secured.

The RNLI crew returned to the lifeboat station at 11.35pm.

But at 11.36pm they were called back out tasked the same crew to search the shoreline for a missing person.

In good searching conditions the volunteer crew were able to cover from Kilmuir to Charleston easily.

Nothing was found during this search and the crew were stood down at 12.50am

Nearly seven hours after the first alarm was raised at 6.30pm the previous evening the second crew were back ashore and the lifeboat made ready for the next service call by 1.30am.