Barrow Lifeboat Station’s volunteer crew launched their all-weather lifeboat yesterday to go to the aid of a wind farm vessel adrift in the Irish Sea.
The call for assistance came from the HM Coastguard base in Holyhead, at 11:15am yesterday morning (Friday 8 November 2019). The information received was that the wind farm crew transfer vessel (CTV), ‘Njord Lapwing’, had lost all power and was drifting some 20 miles west of Walney Island.
The crew was paged and the all-weather lifeboat, ‘Grace Dixon’, was launched at 11:40am under the command of Coxswain, Shaun Charnley, assisted by five crew.
The lifeboat arrived on scene after a 70-minute passage where it was able to relieve the wind farm guard vessel ‘Fairline Surveyor’ which had been standing by the CTV until the lifeboat arrived.
A line was attached to the ‘Njord Lapwing’ and the lifeboat began to tow the stricken vessel back to Barrow. About an hour into the tow, the two crew on board the CTV managed to rectify the fault with their vessel. Once it was established that the CTV was fully operational again, the tow was released, and the CTV continued its passage to Barrow under its own power.
The lifeboat returned to the boathouse at 3:30pm where it was washed down and made ready for the next launch.
The wind at the time of the incident was northerly; Force 3, with the next high tide due at 8:57pm with a height of 8.1 metres.
