A father and three sons have heaped praise on rescuers who managed to tow their hire yacht off rocks in 8ft waves on Loch Ness.
The three-man crew escaped intact other than bruised pride after their ordeal in a force 5 wind yesterday morning.
The local RNLI team was alerted to the incident at Torr Point near Dores on the south side of the loch at 10.30am and had the trio safely returned to dry land about an hour later.
Lifeboat spokesman Martin Douglas said: “There was a stiff southwesterly wind. They were hard aground and couldn’t motor themselves off, so they called for help. The yacht was at a 30-degree list at that time, but didn’t take on any water.”
No-one was injured. The yacht, Lively, was towed to the safety of deeper water and its engines were able to be restarted.
The 37ft vessel was escorted to Dochgarroch where the RNLI team was met by volunteers of the Inverness Coastguard team who helped with the mooring and securing of the vessel, and carried out checks on the yacht.
A senior member of the RNLI team living beside the loch witnessed the drama, though binoculars, from his home and gave Coastguard headquarters in Aberdeen a running update on the operation.
The boat’s skipper, computer specialist James Bennett, 53, from Birmingham and his two sons Charlie, 24, and Jack, 16, were none the worse for their experience.
Mr Bennett said: “We set off from the canal into the loch and all was fine, but we then lost the energy in the boat and couldn’t bring the nose round. So we put the motor on but it didn’t catch and, because of the drift, we had go for a pretty swift manoeuvre to bring it round to take it downwind. At which point it caught a rock and that was pretty much that.
“The RNLI was just fantastic. They came zooming up and threw us a rope which we tied on. I didn’t think they had a cat in hell’s chance of pulling us free, to be honest.”
RNLI regulars Howie Whyte and Joy Cameron were joined in the rescue by newest and youngest recruit 20-year-old James Lynch from Drumnadrochit on his first call-out.
Mr Lynch said he felt well prepared having trained for precisely that scenario last night.