Douglas RNLI lifeboat volunteer crew were paged yesterday (7 November) at 6.58pm when St Bees lifeboat on exercise reported receiving a distress signal.
The request from the coastguard was for the Douglas volunteer crew to use their lifeboat's DF (direction finding) equipment to try and trace the source of a signal on the VHF 121.5kHz distress frequency.
The RNLI all-weather lifeboat Sir William Hillary was lowered down its slipway out off the boathouse so the mast with the DF aerials could be raised. No trace of a signal was found which was reported back to the Coastguard. The lifeboat was then requested to launch and proceed to a point some 10 miles off Douglas while scanning for the distress signal.
Having reached their 10 mile objective with no signal found the lifeboat volunteer crew were stood down by the Coastguard to return to station where the lifeboat was re-housed, washed down, refuelled and made ready again for service.
