A 28-foot scallop dive boat broke free from its mooring during Storm Barra.
The Kyle lifeboat crew were alerted to the incident at 2:14pm on Tuesday after the UK coastguard received reports of an unmanned vessel being beached in Kyleakin in Scotland.
The lifeboat launched less than ten minutes later, at 2.23pm, but by this time, the dive boat had broken free of the shore and drifted under the Skye bridge, where it became wedged between the pier at the Mowi fish feed plant and a cargo vessel which was tied up alongside.
The all-volunteer RNLI crew battled strong winds and rough sea conditions as they struggled to put in place a tow. Despite the appalling conditions, they eventually succeeded and managed to return the dive boat back to the pier by 3:10pm.
Speaking of the incident, a Kyle spokesperson said: ‘When we arrived on scene the dive boat was stuck between a cargo vessel and the pier at the Mowi plant making the extraction difficult. We had to tow the vessel out backwards which made it tricky to control in the stormy conditions, however once we got into open water we could adjust the lines and tow it forwards as we headed back to Kyle.”
This incident marks the second time in just over two weeks that a Kyle lifeboat has been called out to a vessel adrift under the Skye Bridge.
