A man and his teenage daughter had to be rescued by fire-fighters this evening after their boat ran aground.

Daniel Bird, 37, from Crown Road, Milton Regis, Sittingbourne, was giving his daughter Lexi Reene, 15, a lift for the first time in his cabin cruiser.

But he misread the position of guidance buoys and smashed into a mud bank as he tried to navigate a narrow channel in front of the Old House at Home pub at Queenborough, Sheppey.

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VIDEO: Firefighters rescue man and his daughter

As the tide and temperature dropped he called 999 from his mobile phone to ask for help.

Two fire crews from Sheerness and Sittingbourne attended and, using an inflatable dinghy, deployed two inflatable mud boards to reach the stranded sailors. A team from the Coastguard Cliff and Mud Rescue Unit was also at the scene.

Mr Bird said later: “The rescue teams were superb. The boat is normally moored in the creek but I wanted to give my daughter a lift.”

His daughter had joined her dad after school at the Oasis Academy’s Sheerness campus. She said: “I’d never been on a boat before but this hasn’t put me off although I’ll be a bit more careful next time. It was quite cold and shocking more than frightening.”

Her father told rescuers he would have been prepared to have spent the night on board if he had been alone but his daughter was feeling the cold.

Once ashore, Coastguard officers gave him a gentle dressing down as they discovered he had no flares or radio on board. They also pointed out mobile phones rarely work at sea and suggested he invest in navigation charts in the future which give the position of underwater hazards.

Paul Schembri, crew manager at Kent Fire and Rescue’s Sheerness station and who was in charge of the operation, said: “I would seriously suggest that anyone with a boat should invest in a day’s skipper course before taking it to sea. A copy of the tide tables would also be useful.

“This was caused by an error in reading the buoys. They were very lucky. It could have been much worse if they had been further out to sea.

“If it had happened four weeks ago the rescue operation would have been in the dark and cold and much more difficult.”

The alarm was raised by Coastguards just before 5pm. The pair were back on dry land just after 6pm. Mr Bird was planning to retrieve his boat later tonight at high tide around 2am.