Episode 3 Saving Lives at Sea

We're an island nation,

drawn to the sea that surrounds us.

For many, it's a playground.

For others, it's where we earn our living.

But the sea's unpredictable.

It can change in an instant.

And when accidents happen...

they happen very fast.

The sea is a dangerous place.

If you don't respect the sea, the sea will bite you.

There to save our lives is a volunteer army

of nearly 5,000 ordinary people.

Ready to leave their jobs, their families, to race to our rescue.

It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,

to know that if it wasn't for you that person wouldn't be here.

They rescued me, but they also saved a mum, a daughter, a sister, a wife.

Oh, my God.

To see someone disappear under the water right in front of you

is brutal. It's absolutely horrendous.

Equipped with their own cameras...

-Is my light flashing?

-Yeah, it's fine.

..the crews give us a unique insight into every call-out,

as only they see it.

There's another little wave.

Speeding through the roughest weather,

searching for people who may only have moments to live.

Can you still hear me?

For those who risk their lives, it has become a way of life.

When those pagers go off, it's life and death.

Off the coast of South Wales,

the Bristol Channel is shrouded in thick fog.

Guarding these treacherous waters, Porthcawl lifeboat station.

SIRENS

An emergency call's come in.

The volunteers here are used to dealing with any crisis the sea can throw at them.

Go and get dressed.

But today's different.

You're programmed to attend at the lifeboat station, put your gear on

and go out and rescue somebody at sea.

It's not often you hear that

you're going to rescue somebody fallen from a horse, in a boat.

The only information the crew have is that a woman has been seriously

injured while out riding.

The 20-year-old is on a remote beach three miles up the coast.

She is too far from a road to reach by ambulance.

In this fog, an airlift by helicopter would be too dangerous.

The only way to get her to hospital for urgent emergency care

is by boat.

We were kind of the only option.

A lump automatically appears in your throat

to know that it comes down to you.

You can't really get it wrong.

You can't take your time.

You just need to get there and get the job done.

Between the crew and the casualty

lies one of the most dangerous headlands on their patch,

Sker Point.

To make matters worse, today they can barely see it.

Sker Point is an area that you treat with massive amounts of respect.

It's an evil cocktail, if you like, of dangers.

It's got needle-sharp rocks.

Big tides. Fast-moving water.

Some would use the word treacherous.

It's an area that you try to avoid, if you can.

The fog was so thick,

it was really outside of our comfort zone.

We couldn't see a thing.

Somebody was testing us.

The coastguard and paramedics have got down to the remote beach on foot.

Cold, wet and in pain,

Sophie, the rider, has already been examined by the medics.

Her horse has been caught and led to safety.

All right...

But Sophie hasn't been so lucky.

Hello, Sophie. Give us a sec, I'll have a chat with the paramedic,

and then we'll get a plan to get you

somewhere warm and dry, all right?

Right.

My phone rang, and it was Sophie to say, "I've had a disaster."

"Moby ran towards some rocks,

"and I've fallen off and I've hurt my left side."

Then she started crying, and that's when I started thinking,

"What damage has she done?"

Everything was going through my mind.

Did she break her leg,

break her arm? She was never going to walk again...

INDISTINCT RADIO MESSAGE

It just frightened the life of me thinking the very, very worst.

It was when we learned that actually this is

potentially a spinal injury with

potentially life-changing injuries attached to it,

everything tends to slow down

and you need to start to really think about

what we're going to do and how we're going do it.

What we're going to do then is take you on our boat.

No, no. We're not going to be doing stuff like that, OK?

Sophie has been given drugs for the pain, and strapped to a stretcher.

If she's damaged her spine,

any movement could leave her permanently injured.

Ready, brace, lower...

But now the crew have to get her and the paramedic onto a boat

and out through the waves.

While Simon stays with the casualty,

helmsman Bee gets extra hands

from the bigger boat waiting offshore,

to help with the delicate manoeuvre.

You stay as you are, and as the boat is set at that angle there,

that's exactly how we're going in, all right?

We had two people on board

that really weren't used to being out at sea.

One of them was completely immobilised.

The worst case scenario would be

that we encounter some large surf

and the boat go over.

OK, so the brief I've given to the paramedic is

if it goes over, we'll worry about the casualty,

he needs to worry about himself,

so stay with the boat or a lifeboat man, OK?

-VOICEOVER:

-It's all about risk versus benefit.

Is the benefit worth taking the risk?

And in this situation, when you're told that there is no other option,

there is no other way of extracting this person safely, and comfortably,

then, yeah, it was worth the risk.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Steady. Steady, Eddie.

-Steady, Eddie.

-Are you all right?

I'm your captain, and everything is going to be fine, trust me, OK?

All right. If we can just turn her head towards my left

to the starboard side of the boat...

Right. Excellent.

There we are.

Paramedic... If we get the paramedic on the bow here.

Don't worry, mate. It's just to keep you dry, all these bags.

OK, don't worry.

The crew must now navigate the riskiest part of the evacuation.

Hold us here, guys.

Just let this settle down for a second.

Standing between Sophie and safety is the breaking surf.

You're telling her everything is going to be OK, you will be fine.

Step away, guys. Step away.

What you're actually thinking is,

please let it be calm,

please let there be no waves,

please let this be OK.

There's always an element of doubt.

But you can't show THEM that.

We've got a little wave, I'll just...

No, don't worry, that won't happen.

It's not going to happen.

It must have been absolutely petrifying

knowing that you're strapped into a stretcher,

and if you ended up in the

water you wouldn't be able to swim,

you wouldn't be able to move your arms.

You would literally be at the peril of the lifeboat crew

that are with you.

That must have been pretty horrific.

There's another little wave...

Are you OK, Soph? Are you OK?

SHE SCREAMS

That's all right. OK.

It's all right, mate. You're all right.

There you go. That's perfect.

Well done. You're all right.

You're all right. Well done.

That's the worst part. That's it, we're good now.

How are you doing?

I know...

OK. We're getting out now.

We're going onto the big boat now.

Nothing is going to happen to now, OK?

You're absolutely fine.

There's far too much paperwork involved to let anything happen to you now.

Bee and the crew face one final hurdle -

heaving Sophie on to the larger, faster lifeboat

to get her to medical attention as soon as possible.

Well done, Soph.

Right.

Well done, mate. Goodness me.

Mate, I'm just going to try and tuck you in a bit.

I know you're probably soaking wet,

and thinking "What's he talking about?"

20-year-old Sophie has been riding for eight years.

She was galloping her horse, Moby, along the beach

when she lost control.

The accident was caught on Sophie's own camera.

Well, one minute I'm on Moby,

next minute I'm on the floor,

crying, soaking wet, and the next minute I'm going onto a lifeboat.

So...

I just couldn't believe what was going on.

Never, I've had no problems with him.

We've gone hacking... Never any problems.

We had a canter through the sand dunes, went into a gallop,

and after a couple of seconds

I felt like, "Oh, I don't have him any more."

It's one of the worst feelings I think I've ever been through.

SHE SCREAMS

If the RNLI hadn't come, I literally don't know what would have happened.

Is your pain still the same?

-Yeah.

-It's not getting worse though?

-No.

-OK.

-Anything else?

-Just cold.

Just cold. I know.

They were so friendly, they were making me laugh,

just making me feel comfortable.

We're nearly home, mate. We've got about ten minutes now, OK?

I know that seems a long time, but if I keep yabbering then

we'll be there in no time.

It made me feel a bit, like, safe, even though

it was a scary situation to be in.

What I'm going to do, just so people don't stare at you,

I'm just going to hold this like this, all right?

They were just so...

It's just crazy, just what they did.

Back at Porthcawl, an ambulance is waiting to take Sophie

for the final leg of her journey to hospital.

There you go, Soph.

All the best, mate. See you soon, all right? You take care.

They rescued my daughter.

She could have died. They did a fantastic job.

This is one of those jobs that you do lose sleep over,

you do go through the "what ifs".

Because if it had gone wrong it would have gone very wrong.

To get back to the lifeboat station is always a relief

after a job like that.

For the volunteers at Porthcawl, between call-outs,

it's back to the day jobs.

Can I have a cod, please?

In Bee's case, he's cooking up the local catch.

Yeah, we're probably

200 metres, 300 metres from the lifeboat station.

So, yeah, it suits me well.

There's the lifeboat station.

It's so convenient, I've had to buy next door to live in.

We're looking to extend the shop - I live above it

so that we can be nice and close to the business

but even closer to the lifeboat station.

If I'm working on the chip shop,

literally everything stops

and I will run flat out from behind the range

or from whatever I'm doing,

and I will be sprinting out of the chip shop

down to the lifeboat station.

And I reckon I can do it in about 32 seconds now.

From the sandy beaches of South Wales

to the wild shores of Shetland,

at any time there are up to 5,000 yellow-booted volunteers

willing to drop everything to save the lives of others.

PAGER RINGS

When the pager goes off it's kind of...adrenaline straight away,

massive rush,

drop what you're doing

and just run to the car.

PAGER RINGS

Am I going to run, am I going to drive?

Where are my keys? Where are my shoes?

PAGER RINGS

For me I'm always in the shower or in the bath.

Have I got clothes on, do I need to have clothes on?

I don't think any lifeboat volunteer

will sleep naked.

I never take shoes.

It's stupid, really.

And then I always pinch a pair of wellies from the station

and take 'em back home. I've got about ten pairs probably in the shed.

The last time my pager went off I was sat in a geology class.

The teacher looked at me funny and said, "You're beeping.

A lot of roast dinners been missed,

Christmas dinners...

I don't know how many times I have left mid-dinner, starting dinner.

There was a shout on our first wedding anniversary,

I remember that. I think there was three shouts that day.

The first one was about 5:45am in the morning,

so no chance of a lie-in.

My personal life has suffered from being part of the RNLI.

I'm pretty sure I was dumped once because of it.

But, hey, you know - we win some, we lose some, don't we?

Of the 238 lifeboat stations in the UK and Ireland,

one of the oldest is on the North Sea coast at Redcar.

There has been a lifeboat here since 1802.

Redcar is quite your stereotypical seaside town.

Booming during the summer, thrives off the arcades, the high street

and the fish and chips.

It's just your normal seaside town, if you like.

Redcar was transformed by the arrival of the railway in the 1840s,

as Victorian day-trippers descended in their thousands

to enjoy eight miles of inviting sandy beach.

Before the arrival of their first motor-powered lifeboat in 1931,

crews put to sea in open-top rowing boats,

dragged into the water by a team of horses.

Today the lifeboats here rely on an alternative form of horsepower.

This is where we house our 85,

in the bigger area with our launching vehicle.

Nathan is one of 24 volunteers ready to head out in all weathers.

Here we have Steve, the institution's smallest tractor driver.

He's also a nurse, so he generally tends to look after the first aid

equipment we have on station.

Good afternoon, Nathan.

Steve's a tractor driver. His primary role on station is just breaking things,

-unfortunately for Steve.

-And making tea.

And making tea. And Neil's just joined up.

-And does Nathan take the mickey out of you guys quite a lot?

-Yes.

He has been known to, yeah.

A Land Rover full of balloons.

Missiles in your exhaust.

The last one that he probably did was that one with the hazard tape.

You never know what's going to happen next.

It's camaraderie, it's what keeps us going, it makes us who we are.

It's good to know that when we need to do a job,

we can all come together and get it done -

regardless of the craic and the mickey-taking on station,

when stuff needs to be done we all come together

and the job gets done when it needs to be.

And many of the jobs the Redcar crew get called to

are down to one particular problem.

At Redcar we have quite a unique set of rocks, and they are not the

friendliest of rocks.

So, our spectrum for call-outs, our potential for call-outs,

is quite high.

These innocuous-looking rock formations, also known as scars,

have kept the lifeboat crews busy since the first tourists arrived.

At low tide, they can be seen stretching a mile out to sea.

As the tide rises,

within minutes they can become islands cut off from the shore,

before slipping under the sea themselves.

Tide cut-offs, they are our most frequent customer.

It comes in pretty quick and there's nowhere to go.

Once you are cut off, it's only a matter of time

before that little island you're standing on

is no longer an island.

I have no problem with people getting cut off by the tides at all.

-It just comes as part and parcel of the service...

-PAGER BEEPS

The sunshine has brought a rush of visitors to the beach.

Out of the way, please.

Two out clambering on the rocks

have now been cut off by the fast-rising tide.

Move out the way, please. Move out the way!

Around our shores,

lifeboat crews rescued 683 people cut off by the tide last year.

Of those, the crews reported that 82 would have drowned

if they had not intervened.

We had to launch the lifeboat very, very quickly

as the tide's still rising.

And where they were, the water was becoming deeper.

One minute you can be high and dry, the next minute it can be six,

seven foot of water above it.

The tides change that quickly.

A day out at the beach for two local students

has turned to potential disaster. They're stranded,

but the fast-moving tide is only half their problem.

With the submerged rocks now surrounded by several feet of water,

any attempt to walk back could see them plunged in over their heads,

and the crew have no idea if the teenagers can swim.

The terrain between the beach and the rocks where

the two teenagers were is treacherous.

It's rocky, it's slippy,

there's big holes, there's crevasses.

When you need rescuing,

there's always going to be that temptation to rescue yourself.

That's human nature.

Unfortunately, the knowledge isn't there

to do an effective self-rescue.

Although you could be waist-deep in water, on a rock ledge,

one wrong step and you could fall off the ledge

and be in over your head.

With the teenagers now a danger to themselves, speed is critical.

But the rocks lurking beneath the surface are also a danger for the crew.

Do you think they were quite relieved to see you there?

Probably not.

I think they were expecting someone to come over and tell them off

for being cut off on the rocks.

Yeah...

It happens. They are not the first and they will not be the last people

that we get off them rocks.

While the rescue would have been all too familiar to the Victorian crews

who used to patrol this patch,

today's trippers may have had a uniquely 21st-century souvenir

in their sights.

The two people on the rocks may have been chasing Pokemon characters.

I believe that was what they were doing,

and then the tide caught them out.

I personally would not chase the Pokemon characters out to sea.

I wouldn't chase Pokemon characters on land either.

Around the country, volunteers have learned that no matter what the

weather, when the great British public mixes with the water,

it can be a recipe for disaster.

As soon as the sun shines, every man and his dog

wants to be out there on a dinghy or a lilo.

People that have no idea and have never lived by the sea,

come down and "Oh, that looks great, let's go and enjoy it."

And they don't understand the risks.

A lot of people come on holiday,

they don't even know the sea comes in and out.

They just don't have a clue about anything at all about the sea.

People that have come down for the day,

or buy an inflatable without oars,

sit in the inflatable and been blown out to sea.

Everybody jump in.

One bank holiday we were called out six times to inflatable dinghies

that were being blown out to sea.

You sometimes get people

from up in the valleys come down

and launch their jet ski and don't have any fuel.

We have now recovered five casualties to the boat...

We had one call-out once where people were trying

to use an electric fan

because their engine had stopped working, to get themselves going.

Just two people?

We pride ourselves on

not being judgmental

on anyone that we rescue,

so we offer our support to absolutely everyone

in any circumstance.

It's not just casualties of the two-legged variety

that occasionally call on the lifeboat crews' services.

We did have a cow rescue in Kinsale.

Quite a funny situation, really.

They all ended up in a cave.

Unfortunately, the tide started coming in and they got stuck.

The lads went into the cave and, one by one,

pulled the cows out.

It turned out that all of them were in calf.

Eight cows that day and potentially eight calves,

so that's 16 lives saved that day.

Seeing the cows walk away safely, wagging their tails,

it looked like they were very grateful.

The cows always say thank you.

Lifeboats have been guarding the waters of both the UK and Ireland

since the RNLI was founded in 1824.

Castletownbere is one of 46 stations that guard

the entire Irish coastline.

Come on...

Of the 1,000 souls in this remote fishing town,

26 carry emergency pagers.

Look.

That's all Daddy's stuff there. Look.

Including volunteer and father of three, Dave.

Yeah...

Two boots. Do you know what happens when the pager goes off?

-Beep.

-Beep, yeah.

-Where do I go?

-Lifeboats.

-Lifeboats, yeah.

And where do we go?

Out to sea? Yeah.

Sometimes at night, isn't it?

I was a volunteer since 2008.

Emma was born in 2011.

And the boys were born in 2015.

Life got busy.

Before, you could just run out the door and close the door and there

was nothing to worry about until you got back.

But now you're going away from your wife and three kids.

It's a slightly different feeling, definitely, yeah.

Definitely. But it wouldn't stop me doing it.

Push!

Yeah, you have to sacrifice,

but I think volunteers are happy to do it.

It doesn't feel like a sacrifice, to be honest.

You're maybe leaving your wife and kids at home,

or in a restaurant or something, when your pager goes off, but,

thankfully, they are very understanding as well

and they know what it's all about, too,

and they're happy that we do it

and I don't think my wife would have it any other way, anyway.

Dave and the other volunteers keep watch over thousands of square miles

of ocean.

To battle everything the Atlantic can throw at them,

the crew here are armed with one of the biggest weapons

in the rescuers' arsenal.

The Severn-class lifeboat is designed to handle any conditions.

There's nothing between us and America, so, you know,

we get big weather systems coming in from America.

If you have an Atlantic storm you'll get the full fury of it.

The coastline is very rugged.

There's lots of things that can catch seafarers out.

It's very unforgiving, so it is.

One, two, three...

It's inevitable that something happens every now and again.

-RADIO:

-5:20am, I'm hoping you don't have to be up and about just yet,

and judging by the weather I've woken up to,

probably the best place is to be in bed...

A huge storm, 150 miles wide, is rolling in across the Atlantic.

There are warnings of gales in Plymouth, FitzRoy,

Sole, Lundy, Fastnet,

Irish Sea and Shannon.

The coastguard has put in an urgent call to the Castletownbere crew.

That day, myself and my wife, we were due to go to a wedding.

Initially I had no idea what call it was.

I said, "I'll be gone maybe for a couple of hours."

So it wasn't until I got to the station that I realised

what was happening, and where we were going.

I realised this was a big shout.

45 miles out to sea,

a 62-year-old sailor, alone on a small yacht, is in danger.

The yacht's mast has snapped,

leaving him at the mercy of 30-foot waves and gale force winds.

The weather conditions that day were fairly rough.

I'd never experienced any weather on the boat like that before.

It was probably one of the worst days I was ever at sea.

Even with the most powerful lifeboat in the fleet,

with a top speed of 25 knots, in these conditions

it will take the crew over two hours to reach the yachtsman.

Our thought process on the way out was,

are we going to be able to get him off the boat,

is he going to be injured?

Potentially, is he still going to be there,

is one of these big seas going to wash him off?

I suppose the thing that we're concerned with is finding him.

A search and rescue helicopter has also been scrambled.

Together they scour the sea for the tiny yacht.

A white yacht

in white seas that has been de-masted.

You know, it's, um...

like looking for a needle in a haystack, really.

Over two-and-a-half hours after leaving port,

the crew finally spot the stricken yacht.

An experienced solo yachtsman,

the 62-year-old sailor had been returning home from the Azores to Scotland

when he was caught by the storm.

For the last 48 hours,

he's been battling the conditions alone without any sleep.

Just as we arrived he appeared up on deck.

He just looked exhausted.

The conditions that he was in must have been absolutely frightening.

Every minute must have been like an hour out there for him.

Although the crew can finally see the sailor, in these seas,

any attempt to get to him could be catastrophic.

The weather was atrocious.

It was virtually impossible to try and get the two boats

alongside each other...

..the lifeboat being 43 tonnes weight.

If that hit off the yacht in those seas,

it would probably just cut it in two.

The crew decide their best option is to tow the boat over 45 miles

back to port.

The exhausted sailor must attach a rope to the bow of his boat himself.

Out of the shelter of the cabin, he's exposed to the full force of the storm.

He did struggle to attach to the tow rope,

he seemed slightly disorientated.

He kind of wasn't sure what he was doing at that stage.

I'd say delirious from just the rolling around

and being thrown around at that stage, you know.

At towing speed,

the yachtsman now faces ten hours being dragged

through 30-foot waves in gale force winds.

He spent most of the tow half submerged.

A sea would come, we'd go up one side,

down the other side, and he'd appear through it in behind us.

It was more like a submarine than a yacht for a lot of the tow, to be honest.

It's a hellish enough place for him to be.

Just two-and-a-half hours into the tow,

the drained yachtsman signals to the crew for help.

I'd say he was ready to throw in the towel at that stage.

He had no more to give.

He told us that he was getting very, very cold.

Hypothermic.

Once we heard that, we thought we have to do something here and

we'd better get him off the boat.

What went through my mind is that this is going to be difficult, whatever we're going to do.

The weather was still up kind of force eight, force nine.

And it was eight or nine metres swell at that stage.

In the conditions it would have been...

It would have been too dangerous to go alongside him with the lifeboat.

Fears for the yachtsman growing, Ryan faces a dilemma.

The decision I made was the lesser of two evils, really.

You're not going to leave the casualty on board his vessel

if he's in trouble,

and, you know, if he's calling for help.

At the end of the day we're there to try and help,

so we do that to the best of our ability.

He decides to launch a small inflatable boat

to get the sailor off the yacht.

Brian are now faces another difficult decision -

who to send out.

It was risky because it's only a small boat.

In those sorts of winds it could be picked up and blown over, you know,

it could be capsized.

I was very apprehensive as to... you know, who could I send?

Who's going to refuse, you know?

You're not there to refuse, you're there to help.

Someone's life is at stake,

you don't think about yourself in that situation,

you just think about what you have to do.

Someone had to do it, so I volunteered.

I said, "Brian, look, if you want,

"I'll throw on a dry suit there

"and put on my life jacket and helmet, and I'll go and get him."

I don't think I did at that moment,

I don't think I thought of my family.

You kind of can't cripple yourself with thoughts like that

because there's potentially another dad out there

trying to get home to HIS wife and his kids.

I mean, you have a task at hand.

As Dave sets off in the small inflatable boat,

with all hands on deck,

untended, the lifeboat's onboard cameras stop recording.

20 minutes after heading into the storm alone,

Dave returned with the sailor.

He was very, very happy to be off

that yacht, and the prospect of going on board

the big, warm-looking lifeboat was very, very appealing to him.

After 20 hours at sea,

the crew brought the sailor and his yacht safely back to harbour.

I think he did appreciate the risks.

He was telling me he had nightmares for a few nights after it,

you know, with the conditions that he had experienced, you know.

For someone that had the experience that he had,

it said a lot to say that he was having nightmares

after it, you know?

The Castletownbere crew received an award for their actions

at sea that day.

Was what I did that day very brave?

I'd say what I did that day was very necessary.

When someone is in trouble, we all volunteer to go and do that,

we all volunteer to go out to sea when the weather is good

and when the weather is bad,

and it's all for the same reasons, you know,

to help someone that's in trouble at sea.

I think any one of the crew, if they had the opportunity to do it,

would go and do it, you know.

In a heartbeat.

That's the kind of crew that they are, you know.

I think I made the wedding for about 12 o'clock that night.

There was a bit of a debriefing with my wife -

"Where were you till now?"

She was just relieved that we were back,

that we were home safely and that I was all right.

All volunteers must accept that danger comes with the job.

And every stretch of coastline has its own reminder

of the ultimate risk they face.

-ARCHIVE:

-Cullercoats on Tyneside is in mourning.

For six members of its lifeboat crew were drowned.

The boat went out in heavy seas, a great wave capsized her.

Within sight of hundreds on the shore, the sea took six lives.

Penlee lifeboat the Solomon Browne

was launched just after eight on Saturday evening.

It's thought the lifeboat was holed while trying to rescue

more people from the coaster.

On the shortest day of winter,

the village of Mousehole reflects the darkest day in its history.

It highlights the fact that we're only human, but there is always

that element of risk

and there is always that "what if".

And I think every one of us knows that.

-ARCHIVE:

-But so cruel was the raging sea,

that the lifeboat, though unsinkable, was capsized twice.

Only one man out of her crew of eight has been saved.

You can see the faces of mothers who have lost their sons.

Of wives who have lost their husbands.

While along the shore, men wait for the victims of the sea.

-CREW MEMBER:

-You're obviously going out there to save lives at sea.

The sea's an extremely dangerous place.

You do know that if something does go wrong,

it could be the ultimate sacrifice that you have to make.

We are essentially trained to put ourselves in that environment

that nobody else can.

So risk needs to be managed

but it also has to be taken.

Yeah, it's what we do. It's what we do,

it's why we're there.

Sitting between Exmoor and the sea lies the town of Minehead.

This sleepy seaside resort is adored by holidaying families and retirees

escaping the rat race.

But the lifeboat station here guards one of the most treacherous stretches

of coastline along the Bristol Channel.

Years ago, before they had comms,

you couldn't hear nothing.

The only communication was tap you on the shoulder or on the helmet.

The boat crew here is made up of 21 volunteers.

If we had a launch now, depending on where it is...

Paul is coming up to 40 years' service.

One of the few youngsters on board, Harry, joined six years ago.

I was just a bit shy.

I was always a shy person, and it's a bunch of new people

I've never met before with a few funny characters...

It can be a bit daunting when you're... I was only 17.

I was quiet to start with, that was a problem, I think.

And now they say I don't shut up, so...

You haven't had to prove anything to us,

it was something we always knew that you were capable of doing

and you've come through.

But there's so much more learn around here,

which I think I'll only ever learn by going on shouts

-and things like that, so...

-You never stop learning.

From each shout, or each exercise, there's always something different.

You just don't know what's round that corner.

By December, with all the summer season crowds gone,

just the locals remain.

One, a 69-year-old woman, has gone missing.

Overnight, emergency services have been scouring the moors and cliffs.

After 17 hours with no sighting, the search is extended to the sea.

The missing woman is a keen hiker

and was out walking on a remote coastal stretch of Exmoor.

When she failed to return home after darkness fell,

her frantic family called for help.

The coastguard had been out all night,

Exmoor search and rescue had been out all night

and the police had been searching for her.

With no trace of the woman on land,

the two Minehead lifeboats have been called out to search the coastline.

But with temperatures plunging as low as three degrees overnight,

the chances of finding her alive are dropping fast.

I was worried because it was a cold night,

she'd been out for a long time...

Somebody that's been out for 17 hours isn't going to be good.

The coastal paths along this stretch of Exmoor

drop hundreds of feet down cliffs, to rocks below.

This notorious knife edge can catch out unwary walkers.

With patchy mobile phone coverage, by the time the alarm is raised,

it may be too late.

She could have fallen down the cliff and banged her head and...

..potentially drowned.

You could be out looking for somebody who's not alive any more.

Since I've joined, I think we've had one shout to

somebody who had lost their life, and I didn't make the shout.

I know the crew who did go out to it said it wasn't very nice.

That is the only sad side of the RNLI.

I always look on it, I'm bringing back someone's loved one.

The crew painstakingly comb every cove and crag...

..all too aware that every minute counts.

Finally, 17 hours after she went missing,

the woman is spotted.

She's alive.

But just above the rising water, she's still in danger.

Stuck in the narrow cave entrance,

the crew can't get their boat in safely to rescue her off the rocks.

Stay there...

They call in the station's second, more manoeuvrable D-class lifeboat.

It's quite a small, narrow cave with a lot of rocks and hidden boulders

underneath the water line,

so they made the decision to wait for us to get up there

because we're more suited to getting into a smaller, confined space.

Going to be five minutes...

There was quite a bit of swell coming up and down the mouth

of the cave, and we didn't want to really get stuck in that.

I remember thinking to myself,

I hope we don't hit any of these rocks that are submerged because,

honestly, you can't see them and you wouldn't even know it was there

and all of a sudden a big "doof" and the prop's been hit.

And it's not the best place to be, in a cave

without a working engine.

It's a bit of a precarious moment.

You don't think about it,

you're just doing your job.

You're just working as a team and that's what you do, yeah.

All right?

All right.

I think she was in a pretty dangerous position.

She was dazed and weak and...

And the boat, it was moving around from side to side

and it wasn't quite level against the rocks.

I don't want the casualty to fall between the boat and the rocks,

because that is the worst place to be.

So I just picked her up and gave her to Rich.

Can we have a look?

Sally's terrifying night in the cave

began after she lost her footing and fell from the clifftop path.

I had a couple of times there where I thought I could really die here.

My biggest fear really was

the cold.

I thought if I fall asleep in the cold, that's it, really,

I don't think I'll wake up, you know.

And I thought, you know, every minute I'm here in the dark,

it's a minute nearer to the daylight -

I had to think positive in the head.

You know, I had to do that, really, to survive there, really.

I was confused. I was a bit confused, I must admit.

My body inside was absolutely like, just tingling,

it was very strange.

I would say she probably had another hour

before she would have got hypothermic.

So we got to her right at the right time.

When I see the boat,

it was just wonderful to see them, really.

I think it was pleased to see me as well.

I think if they thought I was dead that would be awful for them,

they've got to find a body, haven't they? Washed up.

I'd say a little bit surprised to be honest

that she WAS still alive, because it's a long time.

She's a very lucky woman.

Yeah, it was great, great to find her.

Find her as she was, really. Yeah.

Over 18 hours after she set out on her walk,

Sally finally makes it back to Minehead, and medical attention.

I'm very grateful to them,

and I hope I never need them again, really!

To think they're volunteers, they've got other jobs as well.

I think they're marvellous, really.

I was quite proud we found her and got her off.

Once you've saved a life, I suppose it's a little bit infectious

where you want to keep...

You want to make sure that you're on the boat

to be able to go and potentially save ANOTHER life,

because it does make you feel pretty proud.

Back on the south-west tip of Ireland, at Castletownbere,

this tight-knit fishing town has deep pockets

when it comes to funding their lifeboat station.

Today is Lotto day.

This week's jackpot is 5,600 euros

so it can go up to about 10,000 euros if, you know,

if it lasts for a good while.

Sheila is my mother, she's been the fundraising secretary here

for 50-odd years now at this station.

She's a lot of money collected over the years.

Coming from a fishing community,

I think it's good that everyone can play their part.

Especially, you know, you've had a lot of tragedies in this area over the years.

In 1968, there was no lifeboat at Castletownbere.

Three days before Christmas, a local fishing boat,

the Seaflower, was caught in a storm.

All five fishermen were lost at sea.

There was a big search for them at the time.

And the bodies were washed up the next day,

so they were picked up but they had all drowned.

That was a very tragic story.

The loss of so many touched the lives of everyone

in this small community.

That struck a chord

with my mother and my father and...

I think from there they started lobbying

to get a lifeboat established in Castletownbere.

Brian's mum, Sheila, helped fundraise for 30 years.

In 1997, the town got its first lifeboat.

It was great excitement the day the boat arrived.

An all-Ireland match in Dublin wouldn't draw as big a crowd

-at what was here.

-That's how it arrived on the day.

The day she arrived, it was mighty.

-There was a great buzz around the place.

-There was, yeah.

They came from absolutely everywhere.

I was so proud.

It's part of the lifeblood of the community.

Most of the population in Castletownbere are connected

to the fishing in some way or another.

When their loved ones are at sea,

it's good to have the lifeboat there if they get into trouble.

SIRENS

When the Castletownbere crew are awoken in the early hours

by their pagers, they know it means serious trouble.

Out at sea, a fishing boat has issued an urgent mayday.

It was a local vessel, that had sent out a distress,

and they were in trouble, their boat was sinking.

They were abandoning their boat, getting into a life raft.

As soon as we heard that, we knew that things were getting fairly serious.

The two men who work on the boat are both local.

One is related to a member of the lifeboat crew.

The skipper of the boat was my sister's husband.

So obviously it was a very anxious situation.

By the time I got in, there was enough lads there to go on the call.

It wasn't to be, so I waited in the station.

I think I would have preferred to be on the boat.

At least if you're on the boat, you know you're doing things that need to be done.

I probably wouldn't have taken Seamus on that particular call.

It's better not to have that connection,

because if the worst did come to pass,

you would hate for Seamus to be on board.

You're hoping for the best, but thinking about the worst.

The stricken vessel is 11 miles out in the Atlantic.

At top speed, the Castletownbere crew are still almost an hour away.

Not long after they launch,

the coastguard loses radio contact with the sinking boat's crew.

Have they gone down,

have they abandoned ship?

You're totally blind to it.

It's a serious one, really.

You have guys at sea that are in imminent danger.

Abandoning ship and getting into a life raft would be a last resort.

You may have to jump overboard,

casualties end up swimming to the life raft in a lot of cases.

You know, it's survival mode, really, at that stage.

If they do get into the water

or they're hypothermic or they're in shock,

so there's a lot of different factors.

They need to be got out of that situation as quickly as possible.

50 minutes after launching,

the crew approach the last known position of the boat.

There's no sign of a life raft.

Trying to find a life raft at sea

poses a challenge at the best of times.

If you have a swell or a chop going,

you know, it's going to be appearing and disappearing the whole time.

You're going to be scanning the horizon for something,

you know, really, really small.

It's a big, big ocean out there.

Suddenly, they spot an emergency flare.

A few minutes later, a life raft comes into view.

When we arrived, they were overwhelmed

to have a boat alongside them.

And to know that they were safe.

We just threw them a rope.

I threw it probably as hard as I could, to be honest,

just to make sure that it got there.

I don't think I've ever thrown one as accurately, to be honest.

I'd say if I threw it another ten times I probably wouldn't have been able to do that.

I was absolutely delighted that they were OK.

I was absolutely over the moon

that we were going to be able to bring them back home.

The skipper, Miguel, has lived in Castletownbere

and fished these waters for nearly 20 years.

12 years ago, he'd saved enough money to buy his own boat.

He'd been out fishing for mackerel when she started taking on water.

Although the two fishermen are safely on board,

just a few hundred metres away Miguel's boat is in serious trouble.

We made our way over to where their boat was still just about floating.

We thought we might be able to put someone on board,

and get a salvage pump on board and try and get it pumped out.

But when we arrived on scene alongside the boat,

we could see it was just too dangerous

to try and get anyone on board.

Watching a boat going down is...horrible.

It's like watching somebody die.

Just...slowly just slips, that's the only way to describe it,

it just slips away.

And er...you know, there's nothing you can do about it.

I think it's just a life-changing moment, really.

It brings it home to all of us again, you know,

how fragile life is and how fragile working at sea can be.

But at the same time,

we were delighted that we had them on board and that

they were safe and they were well.

And that we were actually bringing them back ashore

and bringing them back to their loved ones.

So we knew that we had done the job that

we have trained for years to do.

Boats can be replaced over time, but you can't replace

a mother, or a father, or a brother, or a sister.

I really didn't care about the boat, once everybody was OK.

The boat really was only secondary.

Obviously it's a loss, but, I mean, it pales in comparison, really,

to what could have happened.

I just shook his hand, I just shook his hand.

You know, glad everything's all right.

I wouldn't be a great hugger.

Yeah.

Intrepid hiker Sally suffered no ill effects from her night in the cave.

She still likes to take long strolls through the countryside.

It did take me a while to find the confidence, really.

I mean, I had to watch every step.

I'm fine now. And I've been out every day,

I've probably been walking more than ever, really.

I mean, I'm very grateful for being here, you know.

I realise how bad it could have been.

I think I feel really lucky, really, more than anything.

But I haven't actually done that walk again.

It's lovely, but I don't think I'll go there again.

I'll tell you, if we've got a little wave...

No, don't worry. That won't happen.

Right, there's another little wave.

Another one. Are you OK, Soph?

Are you OK?

And after her equine accident sparked a seaborne evacuation,

Sophie escaped with just some bad bruising.

I can't wait to go back on him now for the summer,

and start hopefully getting out with him and going to a couple of shows.

No!

Moby got away with a telling-off.

-What's he doing?

-Having a roll.

He's had a bath! He's not...

Trying to find a kayaker in the sea,

the saying "a needle in a haystack" doesn't do it justice.

As a dad, I couldn't think of anything worse

than my child being lost at sea.

You just prepare yourself for the worst.

I thought, "This is it.

"We're done."

SHRIEKING

You know, it was so close.