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Week in, week out, across the UK and Ireland volunteers give up their weekends and evenings to learn life-saving techniques ready for when they need to put their skills into use for real. But despite the hours of training, there are some situations they just can’t prepare for.

In Scotland, the Fraserburgh crew get a mayday call – first they have to find a stricken fishing boat in mountainous seas, then get a tow line attached to her in a force-eight gale, before trying to tow her back to port with neither a working rudder nor any steering.

One hundred miles due east, the crew at Scotland’s only inland lifeboat station, Loch Ness, face their own unique rescue – a yacht at one end of the loch has become lodged on a weir that drains into the river Ness. With one wrong move from the lifeboat threatening to topple the yacht over the weir, the crew must somehow manoeuvre it to safety.

Meanwhile, on the north Devon coast, the crew at Minehead race to a boat trapped in the Bristol Channel at low tide to rescue an unusual casualty - a young puppy called Skip who has swallowed a fishing hook.