COOL HEADS, COURAGEOUS HEARTS

icture Salcombe on the Devon coast during a stormy night last December. Horizontal rain lashes down and icy, gale-force winds howl. At 4am, the jangling beeps of vibrating pagers awaken Salcombe RNLI coxswain, Chris Winzar and his crew from their sleep. Someone is in trouble. Turns out a 45ft yacht with two men on board is aground and at risk of breaking up on the rocks north of Start Point, a greenschist headland stretching into the sea. Arriving at the lifeboat station within minutes, the crew throw on their yellow Helly Hansen kit and red lifejackets ready to board , a Tamar-class, all-weather lifeboat. It’s pitch black, there’s low to no visibility and the wind and waves battle each other in the ebb tide, thrashing with liquid confusion. This far inshore the water is too shallow to approach the yacht, which is trapped