Monday 25 December 2006

Goosed!


It is beginning to look like Swanage lifeboat is going to have a quiet Christmas period. This is not always the case. Several years ago I recall being left in charge of a Goose whilst the remainder of the family left for a mountain bike ride. Not 5 minutes later my pager went off and I spent the next couple of hours in a our old ILB, the 'Phyll Clare', waiting for an unfortunate lady to make up her mind whether to jump or not. Thank goodness a happy outcome, though not for our Goose............

Not everywhere in the RNLI Family is so quiet though. Fowey, Sheerness and Largs to name a few have all launched in the last 24 hours. Largs' shout went like this: At 1334hrs on Christmas Eve the Largs lifeboat launched to a powerboat with machinery failure. With the minimum of fuss the vessel was towed to Largs Yacht Haven. Largs lifeboat crew operate an Atlantic 75 lifeboat, B-739 called Peggy Keith Learmond which was a gift of Mrs Margaret Keith (Peggy) Learmond from Edinburgh. Their new, larger boathouse was built in 1998 for the Atlantic 75 lifeboat and its associated launching vehicle. The official opening of the new boathouse was carried out by HRH The Princess Royal on 3 July 1998.

'It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'
And I turned my face away
And dreamed about you'
(Kirsty MacColl)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi mate, nice pic of our boat there, and yes christmas eve shout was a bit of a formality.Although it was made all the better when we were offered mince poies by the owners of the boat. The boat had suffered a broken belt on their impeller so a simple tow job back to their berth.

We had2 further shouts in the week befopre this one aswell. One to transfer a diver with the bends across to Cumbrae's hyperbaric unit and another was a search of a marina just north of the boat house for a suspected woman in trouble. 1st informant heard a lady moaning and screaming and it later transpired that this was a FAGI as the lady was otherwise occupied with a male friend ( enough said )

anyway good site mate and I like your photo as I said as I am the guy standing up :-)