A kayaker was rescued after succumbing to hypothermia in the water off Brighton beach this afternoon.
The Brighton man, in his 40s, was spotted by worried onlookers on the beach who called the coastguard shortly before 5pm this afternoon.
A spokeswoman for the Brighton RNLI said: “When we arrived at the scene, there was already a passer by with the kayaker. He had been in the water for a while and was suffering from hypothermia.
“We got the gentleman on board and started to warm him up with towels and took an initial assessment.
“We made steady progress back to Brighton Marina and once there we continued to warm him up until South East Coast Ambulance Service took over and took him to the Royal Sussex.”
The rescue came near the end of a busy day for the Brighton Lifeboat crew. This morning, they carried out an exercise with the Coastguard helicopter between the marina and the West Pier.
Here are some pictures of the exercise they tweeted out this evening:
Here are a few still shots from our helicopter exercise this morning with Coastguard 104 #training #RNLI pic.twitter.com/gE9MdPLsuW
— Brighton Lifeboat (@RNLIBrighton) September 21, 2014
A few more from this morning’s exercise pic.twitter.com/PdXoXhGeDw
— Brighton Lifeboat (@RNLIBrighton) September 21, 2014
They also took delivery of a donation of £865 from the Hollingbury Bowls Club:
Today we had Hollingbury Bowls Club come down to the station and present us with a cheque of £865 Thank you #rnli pic.twitter.com/bolQSp4jfd
— Brighton Lifeboat (@RNLIBrighton) September 21, 2014
