Once again we have had a weekend of rather frustrating shouts. It was a weekend of sunshine and strongish breezes so we had anticipated being called for something. However, neither of our shouts were quite what we expected. At about 4.30 on Friday afternoon we were tasked to Ballard point to stand by at the base of the cliff as a man was at the top and threatening to jump. Once on scene the crew were asked to keep the person under observation as he was out of sight of the police. Always a difficult shout as there is little that we can do, tragically we are just there to pick up the pieces if it all goes wrong. Luckily in this case the Police talked the man out of it before he jumped so after about 3 hours the ILB was released and returned to the boathouse.
The next call came late in the afternoon on Saturday. A great many of the crew were out on the water in various craft when the pagers went off. Within moments they all turned and headed for the slipway which rapidly took on the look of a boat jumble. The call this time was to two dogs which had gone over the cliff edge near Anvil Point lighthouse. One of the dogs could be seen in the sea, the other could not be seen and the ILB was asked to search the vicinity. The dog in the sea was recovered and a thorough search of the area made. With nothing immediately found, Swanage Coastguard deployed their cliff rescue team for a better view from over the edge of the cliff, unfortunately this did not yield any results either. With the Coastguard happy that no further action could be taken, the Cliff team and the ILB were able to return to station.
It's curious how each year seems to have a run of certain types of shout. The year before last we had a lot of diver related shouts, last year it was suicides, this year it is animals so far. I wonder if it will continue?
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