An amphibious vehicle got into distress on the Schlei. A roebuck had to be rescued from the water off Büsum last Tuesday. And a sailing yacht that ran dry at night on the River Elbe frightened its crew so much that they made an emergency call.
Schlei: Car on the hook
On Sunday afternoon, the volunteer sea rescuers at the Maasholm station experienced a special kind of operation. According to a DGzRS report, the driver of an amphibious vehicle contacted the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) Bremen at around 1 pm. His vehicle had suffered engine damage off the Schleswig district of Holm. He and his passenger were no longer able to reach the shore under their own power.
The Maasholm sea rescuers set out with the rescue boat "Hellmut Manthey". "We've never had a car in tow before," said rescuer Sebastian Petersen. The particular challenge was that the amphibious vehicle had neither cleats nor bollards for attaching a towline.
Fortunately, the driver had attached a line to the underwater towing eye of his car before setting off. The sea rescuers used this to attach a cleat to the lifeboat. They then slowly towed the vehicle to Haddeby. Due to the shallow water just off the beach, a sea rescuer in a survival suit had to get into the water to pull the car a few metres to the shore using muscle power. Only then did the line reach a vehicle standing on land, which finally pulled the amphibious car out of the water.
Immediately afterwards, the volunteer sea rescuers moved on to the next mission: a sailing yacht had also suffered engine damage on the Schlei. In this case, the tow was purely routine.
Büsum: Rehnot rescue
Last Tuesday morning, the sea rescuers at the Büsum centre experienced an unusual mission. At around 9.15 a.m., passengers on an excursion boat discovered a roebuck in the water off the western pier. It remained unclear how the animal had got there. However, it was clear that it urgently needed help to get back to land.
The alarmed sea rescuers set out with the workboat of the rescue cruiser "Thodor Storm". They found the buck standing on a pile of silt with shaky legs. They carefully approached the frightened animal. They managed to take it on board with a courageous grip. On the work boat, the exhausted buck calmed down noticeably.
In the harbour, the sea rescuers handed the apparently uninjured animal over to a hunter who had been called in. The hunter released the animal back into the wild shortly after its excursion into the North Sea - at a safe distance from the shore.
Glückstadt: Horror in the night
The Glückstadt fire brigade had to deal with a hardly less curious operation on the night of Whit Monday. At a very late hour, two sailors called the emergency services because they thought their boat had suddenly become dangerously tilted near the harbour in Glückstadt. The fire brigade set out with their lifeboat to help the sailors.
That was basically unnecessary. On the spot, it turned out that the crew had dropped anchor in the evening and then gone to bed later - without thinking about the tide. As the SHZ reportsThe water drained away so that the boat first grounded and then lay on its side. According to the newspaper report, this caused one of the sailors to roll out of his bunk and become very frightened.
Believing himself to be in danger, the man quickly dialled the emergency number. The firefighters recognised the harmless situation when they arrived and advised the sailors to wait for the tide and then continue sailing.
Rügen: Smoke development on sailing yacht
In contrast, an emergency that occurred off Baabe on the island of Rügen on Whit Friday afternoon was much more literally dicey. A technical defect on a sailing yacht caused heavy smoke to develop. This initially triggered a large-scale operation by the rescue services. In addition to the fire brigades from Baabe, Sellin and Göhren, the rescue boat "Gerhard Elsner" was also deployed.
The yacht was in front of the Baabe-Bollwerk harbour entrance. On site, the emergency services were able to give the all-clear. The cause of the smoke was not an open fire, but a technical defect in the main engine. The skipper had managed to reach the harbour under his own steam. The three crew members were examined by the emergency services as a precaution. They remained uninjured.
Lake Garda: Operations for motorboat drivers and sailors
Water rescuers were also called out elsewhere. On Lake Garda, for example, the coastguard rushed to the aid of a German family, reports "Qui-Brescia". They had come too close to the shore with their catamaran in the northern part of the lake, ran aground on a shoal and capsized. Other boaters observed the mishap and called the rescuers. They were quickly on the scene and were able to rescue the parents and their seven-year-old child.
In the southern part of Lake Garda, however, it was motorboat drivers who got into a predicament from which they were unable to free themselves. They ran aground with their boat in the shallow area between two islands and got stuck. A coastguard boat and a fire brigade boat rushed to the scene, rescued the crews and finally towed the motorboat free.
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
