Wednesday 2 December 2009

November rain

So there was me thinking that the rain might have disappeared with November. Fat chance, today, down our way has been as wet as ever, perhaps even more so.

Suffering with a cold I decided to stay ashore and do some training in the boathouse with some of our newer crewmembers.

After both boats had gone their seperate ways it was time to head up to the crewroom to begin the exercise.

The ALB put a float into the water at the start of their exercise and then relayed it's position to us for us to work out an estimated position for them to return to in 1 hour in order to search and then hopefully find the 'casualty'.

We spent about an hour running through some simple chartwork then Rob and I worked through a rapid response search pattern with the lads and came up with our Estimated position. To be honest we are both into this sort of thing and enjoyed the process a great deal. Ultimately we came up with two possible positions, one using the factual information that we had...the other adding our own local knowledge to this. Funnily enough our own 'local knowledge' position was much closer to the actual position in which it was found.

In any case, we were all satisfied that our worked example would have stood a very high chance of finding the casualty (though perhaps the incredibly severe rain might have hindered us), so job done.

And when your fears subside
And shadows still remain, ohhh yeahhh
I know that you can love me
When there's no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We still can find a way
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
Even cold November rain

(November Rain - Guns N'Roses)

2 comments:

mannanan said...

Sounds like a very worthwhile exercise was had by all.I just wish I found navigation as easy as you do.I have just this week completed my last Day Skipper TMA and will be taking the final exam in a few weeks time. Something I'm not looking forward to at all. Wet here as well...Keep up the great work.

lifeboatjohn said...

Ha...I don't always find it easy, it's just I've done lots of it. Of course the problem with our business is that we learn to do it on paper then spend all our time using electronic gadgets to do it when we're out there. It's hard to be polished when you don't practise it!

Good luck

jg