Engine trouble: The Vita Lote II

A YACHTSMAN had to be rescued twice in one week after he attempted to sail 300 miles along Britain’s coast using nothing but a mobile phone app to navigate.

The hapless sailor was trying to sail his 32ft yacht single-handedly from Milford Haven to Portsmouth when he got stuck in shallow water in Poole Harbour, The Daily Mail has reported.

A week previously he had been towed into St Ives, Cornwall, after getting into trouble a mile from the seaside holiday town.

Lifeboat crews said they had to tow the boat and its exhausted skipper to the safety of a nearby marina in Poole, following the most recent rescue. Coastguards then visited the vessel, where they discovered the man had been using an app on his phone to work out his route along the coast.

They also found that the skipper, in his 40’s, had 27 out-of-date emergency flares on board the boat – some which were more than 13 years out of date. According to The Mail, he had not used a passage plan for his trip and had not told coastguards about his trip.

The week before two lifeboat crews from St Ives were called out after the engine on the yacht, which is named the Vita Lote II, stopped working. They found the yacht drifting perilously close to rocks but were able to take it back to the safety of the harbour.

It is understood the man, who was described as an experienced sailor, bought the yacht in Oban, Scotland, last year and had then sailed it to Milford Haven to spend the winter there.

He was making his way to Portsmouth when the incidents occurred.

On both occasions the man raised the alarm with the coastguard.

The first incident took place on June 8 and the sailor was rescued again on Monday. Coastguards were so concerned about him they gave him a safety briefing and checked over his equipment including his lifejacket and radio.

A spokesman for St Ives lifeboat crew said: “While out on exercise the all-weather lifeboat and inshore lifeboat were tasked to a yacht that was in difficulty half a mile north of Hor Point. The yacht being close to the shore and with a strong northerly wind blowing the inshore lifeboat was tasked to go and stand by the vessel to wait for the all-weather lifeboat to arrive and attach a tow line.

The spokesman added: “The all-weather lifeboat arrived on scene shortly after and attached a tow line and bought the casualty vessel and two persons onboard into St. Ives.”

After rescuing the sailor again a week later, a spokesman for Poole coastguard said: “We were paged to meet a vessel at Salterns Marina which had run aground in Poole Harbour and needed some safety advice. The vessel was using an 2014 almanac and an app on a mobile phone to navigate from Cornwall to Portsmouth. It turned out he had already been seen by the RNLI down south so seeing us was nothing uncommon to him.”

Allan Norman, of the Marine Coastguard Agency, said: “In this case the skipper had been caught out by the weather. He was singlehanded and had been sailing for quite a long time, so he was exhausted. He was using a navigation app on his mobile phone but he did have the right equipment on board. He was quite experienced so our advice to him was to make sure he got enough rest and to call us with his passage plan in future.”