It has been a busy few days for the crew of Lowestoft Lifeboat, with two call-outs in quick succession.

And later this month, the new Lowestoft RNLI lifeboat will be officially named at a ceremony at the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club – exactly a year to the day since the Shannon class lifeboat arrived on station.

Lifeboat operations manager, Paul Carter, said: 'We are pleased to announce that the new Lowestoft lifeboat will be named at 10.30am on Sunday, September 20 at the yacht club in front of an invited audience. Regrettably there is insufficient space at the Yacht Club to allow the public to view the ceremony, but as soon as the formalities are complete – at about 11.30am – and subject to operational requirements, the crew will take the lifeboat to sea to give a demonstration of her capabilities.

'The public are invited to view the mock rescue exercise from Children's Corner and from South Pier,' Mr Carter said. 'The crew are very pleased with the greater manoeuvrability and speed of their new £1.5 million state-of-the-art life saving craft – which has already been called out 25 times this year. The vessel was funded by a number of legacies and donations, the largest of which was from Patsy Knight, after whom the lifeboat will be named.' This week, Lowestoft lifeboat was called out twice in quick succession. At 7pm on Monday evening the crew assisted a small motor cruiser that had run aground on a sandbank off Lowestoft.

Lifeboat coxswain John Fox said: 'We launched to assist the 24-foot motor cruiser, Summer Daze, that was aground on the Newcombe Sands one-and-a-half miles south-east of the harbour. When we reached the stranded vessel we found that it was still stuck fast on the inside edge of the sandbank and the two crew on board said they had been there for two hours waiting for the incoming tide to rise sufficiently for them to get the vessel off.

'After about ten minutes and with the lifeboat standing-by, the cruiser managed to gradually free itself using its own engine power,' Mr Fox said.

'In poor visibility and heavy drizzle, the vessel was then escorted back to the safety of the yacht basin apparently none the worse for its ordeal.'

Patsy Knight was called out once more at 7.50am on Wednesday morning to go to the aid of a fishing boat, who reported an engine room fire.

Mr Fox said: 'We used the top speed of our Shannon class lifeboat to get to the fishing vessel as quickly as possible. On reaching the 10-metre Stern Trawler, named Ann Louise, which was two miles off Kessingland, the two-man crew told us that they had called for help whilst they investigated the smoke coming from their engine.

'They had found the cause was a burst pipe, which they had been able to temporarily repair and had been able to restart the engine but it was still running hot.'

Have you got a Lowestoft story? Email mark.boggis@archant.co.uk