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Two lifeboat crews have been called out to an incident at the top of Portsmouth Harbour in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The independent life crews from Gosport and Fareham Inshore rescue have been dispatched to aid a 19 foot sailing vessel after a 999 call was made to the UK Coastguard operation centre in Fareham just after 11.20 on Monday evening (13th March 2017).     The 19ft sailing vessel had run aground in Spider Lake earlier in the day and had attempted to refloat at high tide – however the attempts were unsuccessful. The yacht, which had two persons on board, was stuck fast in the mud and even with the tide at its highest couldn’t be refloated. Such was the shallow state of the water, Gosport Inshore Lifeboat was called into action to reach the vessel as it could cope with the shallow water more safely than the larger Gosport Lifeboat. ‘The crew of the Inshore lifeboat managed to get close enough to help the crew off the stricken vessel which they anchored safely to return to when the tide was at its highest,’ explained GAFIRS coxswain Brian Pack. ‘Although they were a little cold after waiting out for the tide for around eight hours, they were both safe and well and we returned them to shore at Port Solent where they soon warmed up.’ In total the incidents lasted five hours and were GAFIRS’ 10th and 11th of the year. GAFIRS is based at Stokes Bay, Gosport, and is an independent lifeboat station manned entirely by volunteers. A spokeswoman for the UK Coastguard said they had tasked two lifeboats to the ongoing incident and were going to the aid of a vessel which had ran aground the spokeswoman said that no one involved had been hurt. More to Follow