Thursday 27 May 2010

Suprise visit

I wasn't really expecting to take the boat out as Cox'n last night but somehow that's what happened. With little warning I found myself out there with a solid crew but not the most exciting plans of what to do. Imagine my delight then, when I heard over the radio one of our local Coastguard helicopters (Coastguard Helicopter 104, from Solent) calling to tell Deasy (navigator for the evening) that they were in the area and would like to spend some time exercising with us! Excellent...

So, out of the sunset they came, all red, white and exciting!

Their winchman, a nice bloke, came down on the winchwire and gave us a good briefing of what to expect.

All of us were surprised at the amount of spray which gets flung around by this new helicopter compared to the old 'Whiskey Bravo'.

This shot in particular shows vividly the cramped conditions on the afterdeck of a Mersey class lifeboat during helicopter operations.

Then after a few turns with the ILB they were off and heading for home...as were we. To arrive back for a quick washdown before a meeting about this year's lifeboat week.

Happy days!!

5 comments:

Will said...

Excellent pix!
Nice to see you back on line!

Simon said...

Hi John, stirring up the emotions of a beautiful Swanage Summer, great to see you back blogging!!Take care Simon

joan said...

Hi John
great to see you back!! The pics are great especially the 1st one
take care joan

Savage Family said...

Good post John, nice to see the blog has not died off without a goodbye ;-)

lifeboatjohn said...

Aye, sorry for the absence folks...been head down and flat out at work. All good though...glad to see that you're all still there!

jg