Late night boat collision prompts air and sea rescue

9:56am Tuesday 5th August 2008

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A woman was airlifted to hospital last light after the boat in which she was travelling crashed into a buoy on the Helford River.

The woman was one of six people in the rigid inflatable boat, commonly known as a rib, which is believed to have been travelling from Flushing near Falmouth to Gillan.

Dave Nicoll, from Falmouth RNLI, said he received a call at around 11pm saying that a rib had possibly hit the August Rock buoy.

Both lifeboats were launched and the crews discovered that a number of the rib’s occupants - understood to be both adults and children - had been thrown from the boat on impact with the buoy, but all had managed to climb back into the inflatable.

A femal crewmember had a head injury that was judged to be serious enough to scramble a helicopter from RNAS Culdrose to transfer her to hospital.

All six people on the rib were moved to the all-weather lifeboat, from the where the woman was winched into the helicopter and taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.

The remainder of the rib’s crew were taken to Falmouth, with their boat towed behind them.

There was no rest for the lifeboat crews however, as shortly after reaching Falmouth, at around midnight, they were called to rescue a French yacht that had got into difficulty off The Manacles.