THE loved ones of a fisherman who went missing overboard 30 miles off the Sussex coast are praying for a miracle and he is found safe.

Darren Brown, who lives in Brighton but grew up in Newhaven, was in the English Channel south of Newhaven when his boat ran into trouble.

Netting or rope either from his boat or another vessel got caught up in his propeller and the experienced fisherman went to untangle it.

In doing so, he was thrown off the boat and into the sea without a life jacket.

With the vessel still incapacitated because of the propeller, his crewmen could not steer the boat to pick him up.

His girlfriend Adele Holmes said: “We’re praying for a miracle.

“He was always saving other people.

“I’ve lost count of the amount of stories he’s told me about jumping on people to stop them going overboard or people getting caught up in ropes and him rescuing them or pulling them back from the edge of the boat.

“He’s been fishing in some really rough waters and it’s really not like him to do it.

“Although he’s brave, I’d be really surprised if he just volunteered to go overboard just to unwrap a bit of rope.

“He’s too experienced to do something like that.

“He knows the dangers and he knows exactly what he’s up against out there.”

With more than 20 years’ fishing experience, the former Tideway School pupil has sailed some of the world’s roughest seas including trips to Norway tackling the North Sea.

He had been with his new boat for three weeks and with the crew a few months as he trained to become a skipper.

Ms Holmes added: “He’s an extremely fit man, very strong and he’s got more than 20 years of experiences on boats.”

Lifeboats from Eastbourne and Shoreham were launched at 12.46pm on Thursday as well as Coastguard rescue helicopters from Lydd and Gosport.

An RNLI spokesman said: “Using computer generated models which calculate the effects of wind and tide, the lifeboats, along with other commercial vessels which had arrived to help, conducted a comprehensive expanding search of the entire area.

“Tragically the man was not found.

“As darkness fell the search was abandoned and the rescue fleet returned to their respective bases.”

The incident has now been passed on to the Marine Accident Investigation Branch, which inspected the boat from which Darren fell yesterday at Shoreham Harbour.

A Marine Accident Investigation Branch spokesman told The Argus the investigation would take months rather than weeks.