LIFEBOAT volunteers from Largs wasted three hours of their time on Saturday evening after a hoax call near Gourock.

The coastguard and MOD police were also involved in the expensive and time-consuming incident.

The crew launched to a vessel reported to be in trouble around Lunderston Bay just after 10pm.

The caller stated the name of the boat was Lady Muck and said she was in difficulty as it was taking on water.

The lifeboat arrived on scene to begin a search, but no vessel was to be seen in the area.

A coastguard helicopter then joined the search, along with a MOD police launch vessel.

Coastguard search and rescue teams carried out a search along the coastline for a period of time, but still nothing was found.

Each of the services were stood down and returned to their respective bases, the lifeboat being re-housed in Largs at around 1.30am Sunday morning.

RNLI spokesman Alasdair Woods said: "You will see how many organisations were involved in this, and you can only begin to imagine the complete waste of time, money and more importantly, the possibility of putting real emergencies at risk.

"There could have been something happening where people were in real danger because all these resources were not available because they were attending what appears to have been a hoax call."