RNLI?crew members and coastguards teamed up in Tenby on Sunday to attend to reports of an injured sailor on board a yacht.

Tenby’s all-weather lifeboat ‘Haydn Miller’ launched at around 5.40 pm after Milford Haven Coastguard received a call from a yacht off Caldey Point, reporting that a crew member was suffering from severe back pain after a fall.

However, as the lifeboat was launching, the crew were diverted to a more urgent call involving a swimmer in difficulty off Castle Beach.

As the lifeboat arrived on scene at Castle Beach, the RNLI beach lifeguards had just located the casualty and were in the process of getting him ashore so the lifeboat was released to proceed to the injured sailor.

Once on the scene, the lifeboat went alongside the yacht and two crew members were put aboard to administer casualty care and give pain relief.

A short time later, Coastguard Rescue Helicopter 187 was overhead and a paramedic was winched aboard the lifeboat. He was then transferred to the yacht to assess the casualty and decide on the best way to proceed.

It was decided that with the patient suffering from severe back pain, it would be more comfortable to get her to hospital via a land based ambulance rather than winching her up into a helicopter, so she was brought aboard the lifeboat, along with the paramedic, and the lifeboat headed to station to meet the ambulance.

Once back at station, the casualty was handed over to the awaiting paramedics and taken to hospital by road.