Recovery of Yacht with fouled Prop & Rudder

The crew were paged at 6:49pm to respond to a Pan Pan call from the 12m yacht Liesel with four people aboard, which had fouled a pot line on passage from Brighton to Chichester harbour. Blue Peter 1 was launched at 6:54pm with Andy Harris, Liam Clarke and Rob Devo aboard, and reached the casualty 9 minutes later. In the rough conditions – blowing a westerly force 6 – it proved difficult to free the line which appeared to have wound itself around propeller, rudder and keel. The lifeboat towed the casualty away from the anchor point and eventually was able to slacken enough of the line to get to it with a knife. The casualty vessel was then towed to Littlehampton harbour for the night. The yacht crew were able to attend to the line in the shelter of the harbour the next morning, and later departed for their home port.