All started fine yesterday for our trip to Lowestoft from Wells at 06.15 and apart from 3 green looking shipmates who all decide not to go below to make coffee etc. all going fine until engine dies after 4 hours. I quickly decide its terminal as it appears to have dropped a valve. Still never mind, its a sailing boat, it sails! Unfortunately we are 25 miles from the nearest port so I decide to press on for Lowestoft and call up for a tow in when we get there. Spring ebb tide then sets in doing about 3 knots against us and in about four hours we manage about 2 miles of progress! About halfway through this Joe decides to contact the coastguard and we are approached by RNLI dinghy type lifeboat from Sea Palling. Are you ok they said so I explained no engine and we are going to try and make Lowestoft by nightfall. At this point Joe pipes up and says can you take me and the lad off.
£4,400 hes just paid for this and hes abandoning ship! 
I aint no sailor he says and informs us hes gonna sell the fecking thing. What I should have done of course is throw the anchor over and joined him but no, we are nice peeps and are in no danger anyway. So me and Roy carry on and the tide turns and we eventually make some headway but at Winterton on sea the wind decides to die completely and a sailing boat with no wind and no engine is just a passenger of the tides. Our turn to call the coastguard now and they inform us that Yarmouth lifeboat will come and collect us at 9pm as it was busy. We already knew this as it had passed us towing in a large fishing vessel. At 9pm we were only a mile or so off Yarmouth having successfully drifted over the sandbanks which we were a bit concerned about but tide was plenty high enough anyway when the biggest fecking lifeboat you ever see with roaring engines comes to the rescue. The Coxwain (boss) is barking orders to his crew members, 'get those fenders working!' He obviously doesnt want our little boat to damage the nice blue hull of his beloved lifeboat which is towering above us bouncing on the swell and they attach the tow rope and off they roar at breakneck speed and deposit us on the harbour wall. Fastest this little boat has ever gone I can tell you!Thanks to the lifeboat and crew, again, but at least it wasnt a blue light job this time. The crew of course were nothing but kindness and respect itself to us even commenting on what a nice boat it was, and they do this job without pay or even expenses 24/7.
Many thanks.
Perfectspecimen.
That story made me laugh! 
