At 10:28am 26 October during the latter stages of England’s Rugby World Cup semi final St Bees RNLI volunteers were paged to reports of a person in the water about 200 metres from the beach at Braystones, about 5 miles south of St Bees.
The St Bees crew were quickly on the scene and along with our colleagues from Whitehaven and Maryport Coastguard, as well Cumbria Police, carried out a joint land and sea search. There was a lot of floating debris from the recent rain, as well as a few seals and porpoise around but after an extensive search of the area it was concluded it was a false alarm with good intent and all teams were stood down.
Dick Beddows St Bees RNLI Operations Manger said: ‘I would like to thank the member of the public who saw what they thought was someone in difficulty at sea and did the right thing by dialling 999 and asking for the Coastguard.”