A FAMILY of four crawled to safety over some of Southampton Water's most treacherous mud in a dramatic rescue yesterday.

They were helped along special rescue mud mats after their dinghy ran aground in a falling tide near Hythe Sailing Club.

Coastguards were alerted just before 5pm and deputy Southampton Station officer Nigel Bunney said that the service helicopter was put on standby.

"In circumstances like this, we would normally let the occupants of a boat wait until the tide came in. But the family had gone out in light T-shirts, they would have had some hours to wait and the temperature would have dropped during the evening.

"Also, one of the children was quite distressed and a rescue by helicopter would have added to that distress.

"We decided to call the Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service as they have extremely good equipment, and crews from Hythe and Hardley were on the scene very quickly," he said.

He warned anyone going on to the water to check the tide times and the weather and take warm clothing with them.

He said: "There are a lot of places around Southampton Water where people can get into trouble."

Hythe Fire Station sub-officer Phil Gittings said that the stricken craft was about 30 metres from the shore.

"The mud in this particular area is extremely treacherous and there are places where it is between three and five feet deep.

"It would have been virtually impossible for anyone to walk ashore, so we called in the service's multi-role vehicle from Eastleigh with its mud packs and we crawled out and brought the four people back two at a time."

The family, who have not been named but are from the North Baddesley area, went to Hythe Sailing Club for a shower. A line was connected to their dinghy and it was towed back to the Sailing Club slipway by the coastguard.