By Stefan Morkis

A BROKEN-DOWN boat helped lead to the rescue of three young boys drifting out to sea in a £5 dinghy at Arbroath on Saturday.

The RNLI lifeboat Inchcape was called out at 2.40 pm on Saturday to go to the assistance of the boat Girl Katherine, which had broken down about a mile and a half out from Easthaven.

The lifeboat took her back to Arbroath but while the Inchcape was out, crew manning the lifeboat station spotted people in a small dinghy being carried out to sea by the tide and a strong wind.

RNLI crew members Peter Willis and Lorne Watt took the inshore lifeboat Andrew Fergusson out to investigate and discovered three boys, aged 11, 12 and 13 in the dinghy, helplessly drifting out into the North Sea.

The boys were taken back ashore where they were checked over by paramedics for the effects of the wet and the cold before being allowed to go home.

All of the youngsters were from Arbroath.

They told their rescuers that they had bought the dinghy, which was destroyed after the rescue, for just £5.

A spokesman for the RNLI said that the incident could have had fatal consequences had the lifeboat station not been manned and the boys not spotted so quickly.

“Although this incident had a happy ending for the boys and their families it illustrates once again the very real dangers of these inflatable crafts,” he said.

“If the boys had not been seen and rescued so quickly, they could have been dead within three hours. If they had been in the water they could have been dead in just 20 minutes.”

He added that parents should not allow their children to take dinghies out into the open water.