On Sunday 8 August 2010 at 6:30 pm the volunteers at the RNLI’s station at Burry Port launched to assist a boat with engine failure off Whitford Lighthouse. The boat, with its three man crew from Llanelli, had left Burry Port earlier in the day.
As the call progressed it came apparent that one of the boat’s crew had decided to swim from Whitford Beach to Burry Port accompanied by the boat. When the boat developed engine problems the two men left on the boat lost sight of the swimmer and had started to panic and issued a Mayday call which was picked up by Burry Port Coastguards.
The coastguard immediately called for the launch of Burry Port’s D-class lifeboat to search the area. The rib Liberty crewed by another lifeboat crewmember was in the area and assisted in the search. The search expanded to include Tenby All Weather Lifeboat (ALB), RAF Rescue Helicopter 169 from Chivenor and Dyfed Powys Police helicopter.
After a search of the area around Whitford Lighthouse the D-class lifeboat was tasked to search the area west of the lighthouse and eventually found the swimmer off Hills Tor, North Gower. The Burry Port lifeboat recovered the very tired and relived swimmer and brought him back to Burry Port to be examined by a paramedic from Rescue Helicopter 169, luckily he was found to be safe and well.
If the swimmer had not have been recovered at that time the falling tide would have taken him further out to sea and would have been in danger of suffering from Hypothermia, he was very lucky.
The Burry Port Lifeboat was crewed by: – Justin Pugh, Julian Aston, Neil Roberts and Hefin Williams. On-board Liberty was Owain Davies.
