Confounded

My hopes of a paddle in the kayak were dashed but a leisurely stroll about the town and Durlston bay revealed that the people were continuing to make good use of the sea. Heading home I watched 'San Gina II' steam across the bay and so popped down to have a quick chat with skipper Tom. He was returning after one of his first trips of the year and reported slim pickings...at least you had the weather Tom!

Blue skies and calm seas

So finally the dreary snow, ice, howling wind and general atmospheric misery has given way to blue skies and calm seas. Walking along the sea front this morning there were 3 gigs plying their oars in the bay and a fleet of dinghies out from the sailing club. Further offshore there is little trade. It is certain that here in Swanage the first hint of clear weather sees us all race to get back into our own particular craft and take to the seas again. Hopefully I can get a peaceful paddle in this afternoon with no demands from my pager...

Sad news

It was very sad to hear last week of the sudden but peaceful death of the ex Swanage Lifeboat Cox'n, Ron Hardy at the age of 91. Ever since I have been involved with the crew, Ron has been a seemingly constant presence nearby at the angling club and has been a source of loyal and wise support for us and the work we do.

It is therefore a huge honour that the crew have been asked to be pall bearers and provide a guard of honour at the funeral next Monday at 1pm at the URC church in Swanage. Though I can't be there my thoughts will be.

Of course, every good man is supported by an equally capable woman, and our thoughts are with Ron's wife, Joan, whom he leaves behind. Joan too has been a huge supporter of the lifeboats. Just over a year ago she stood down as the President of the Swanage Lifeboat Guild after many, many years of loyal service.

The picture above shows Ron as Cox'n of the R.L.P. sometime in the early 70's.

I would be delighted if anyone who remembers Ron's time on the crew and as Cox'n could leave a memory or two as a comment here.

RIP

The Boss

So, our new boss, Paul Boissier, is coming over to visit us this week. Naturally this is very exciting as he is not only ex-RN but also a breadmaking sailor like myself!

I am temporarily indisposed in the North with family sadness but hope to return in time to meet the man himself and perhaps ask him a few questions (I've never done an interview). Perhaps you'd like to let me have some questions that you'd like answering and I will do my best to get them answered. Either attach as comments or e-mail them to me.

Trim

'The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea' defines Trim as being, "The way in which a ship floats on the water, in relation to it's fore-and-aft line". In this picture you can see that a heavy object has been placed on the bow of the ILB and it has altered the Trim of the vessel by sinking the bow somewhat and lifting the stern out of the water...

Extras

Although the ILB requires a crew of 3, during the winter months or when the sea is a bit rougher, we tend to get an extra couple of crew kitted up prior to launching. These extras can be a big help with launching by pushing the trolley into the sea, helping crew into the boat if need be and then of course recovering the trolley once the boat has gone. It's also 'Sods Law' that if only 3 crew get kit on, then one of them will tear a drysuit seal or have another similar incident so preventing them from getting on to the boat thus increasing the time it takes to launch.

Marooned

We used to use this bit of kit a lot. As you can see from the state of it, it is pretty much redundent nowadays. Can anyone guess what it is/was?

Warming up

If at all possible, on cold lumpy days, we try to run the ILB engine for a few minutes to get it warmed up before launching. This gives the helmsman and crew some confidence that when the boat does hit the water and goes beyond the point of no return, that power will be there when it's needed.

Of course, it's not that our outboards are un-reliable, it's just that outboards will be outboards sometimes and why take a chance when you have an alternative?!

Our system is not complex. Indeed it is nothing more sophisticated than a length of hose with flush mutts attached.

Once the crew and helmsman are happy that all is ready and the engine warmed, the mutts are removed and the boat launched.

And when the first wave breaks over the bow...off she goes in a shower of spume and spray.

First exercise of the year

So, this morning heralded the first exercise of the New Year and decade. Good bye 'noughties' and hello 'teenies'!

Once we had all arrived at the boathouse it rapidly became clear that the easterly wind was going to make recovering the Mersey unnecessarily hazardous so it was decided to launch only the ILB. Dressed up warm in their drysuits and woolly bears the lads headed out without a backward glance.

As ever, they achieved much and looked very purposeful and professional out there in the bay on their own. When others are heading out the RNLI head out...

Winter wonderland

Part of the plan with this extended tour of Britain was to get some mountain biking and sea kayaking done. It turns out that the weather gods had other ideas and plans to paddle with some Scottish sea kayaking contacts failed to materialize. The bikes too remain frozen on the roof of the car.

Not ones to be thwarted in plans for having fun we changed plans and had some fun in the snow instead.

Snowman building, sledging and cross-country skiing all made suitable replacements.

Hopes are that the weather tomorrow will be warm enough to allow a safe trip down to Yorkshire to visit the other side of the family.

Boxing Day

As defined by Wikipedia is: The traditional recorded celebration of Boxing Day has long included giving money and other gifts to charitable institutions, the needy and people in service positions. I wonder, then, if the RNLI sees an increase in giving at this time of year?
During today's boxing day stroll the tugs and fishing boats were securely tucked up in Troon fishing dock.

Troon's Trent class lifeboat was safely alongside and, judging by the dusting of frost/snow, has been for some while.
The car park in front of the boathouse also looked fairly treacherous and icy.

Merry Christmas

The weather here in Scotland is truly Christmas like; earth hard as iron, water truly stoney and snow heaped on snow. However, the sky is clear blue, we have a lovely view across the Clyde from Troon towards Arran and it's magnificent mountains. A house filled with children's laughter and happiness, floors littered with paper wrappings...all is good in the world.

So, merry Christmas to all of you who check in here so often, thanks for your comments this year, may you and yours have an excellent Christmas and, while you tuck into your Turkey, spare a thought for those crews and other emergency services around the country who, like Torbay already, will leave their warm homes to help others this cold Christmas day.

Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete!

In defence of the realm

And in February Skid was off the North East coast on a trip onboard HMS Ark Royal. This was a jolly, but one that was intended to foster an greater understanding between the Navy and the RNLI. Needless to say Skid enjoyed every minute of his trip and came home with lots of tall stories and some great photos. Later on in the year we had a number of chances to work with the military, both helping them out with a spot of bother and also conducting rescues jointly with them.

Come June the new boss of the RNLI was announced as Vice Admiral Paul Boissier Royal Navy. He has now taken over from Andrew Freemantle as the Chief Executive (happened at the end of September) of the Institution. I understand that he will be coming to sea with us in the new year on exercise which will be fun. I will let you know all about it when it happens!

Christmas lights tour

No doubt each family has it's own Christmas traditions. One of ours is that, on or around my birthday, we take a drive around the town, after dark, to get a good look at all of the Christmas lights.

We did this last night and some were truly spectacular. The lifeboating link? Well, one of the houses visited belongs to our very own Kev and was the winner of our 'highly commended semi-detached category'.

Our route takes in Corfe Castle, Kingston (too posh for Christmas lights), Worth (Compact Farm gets a mention for best decorated roof), Langton and of course Swanage.

This house, towards the bottom of Langton, is a perennial winner of the 'best decorated detached property' division and this year also came away with the 'Best in Show' award too.

Kev's, and his next door neighbours, were close runners up overall and won the 'best decorated garden building' award for their efforts with the caravan, well done lads!

And finally, the 'best dressed street' went to Hoburn Road with this bungalow being a particular beauty.

Where would we be without traditions hey?

Looking back

It has been a good year and much has happened in a short period of time. This photo of the Mersey launching in early January shows us having 'knocked out' from inside the boathouse. Look closely at the slip and you can see that this was prior to Dave replacing the old rollers with the new plastic ones. About a month later and Dave was fully in the swing of fitting the new ones all the way down the slip. And a huge improvement it has been too.

Office party

Many of our crew are either self employed or work with just one or two others. For this reason many of them are spared the torture that is an office Christmas party. Both Paul and Nick are in this position, though today, as it was their last day at work before Christmas, I decided to treat them to a little piece of the action and delivered them a mini office party (perhaps stretching the truth slightly...being honest it was a mince pie and a bottle of beer). I think that it was appreciated, at least it was by me! In any case, I think they were relieved to have a chance to stop work for a few minutes and chew the fat.

It's a wrap...

Oops...I completely forgot to mention that while we were at sea playing lifeboatmen last night, there was a whole bunch of crew up in the crewroom doing their own training exercise. I think the idea was to try and remind each other how to dress various types of wound. The reality seems to have involved making Becky look as ridiculous as possible!

EffSeaBeeToo

The exercise was a cold one last night but this did not prevent us from being very productive. We had a couple of observers along for the trip, one whom we already knew from last month. Pretty frequently we are asked to take people out to sea with us in order to help them become acquainted with what lifeboat crews do in real life. Often they are new staff who have joined the institution and are working in an area where they are required to either talk with authority about what we do, or need to be able to empathise with the job that we do and the conditions that we work in. In Geraldine's case it's undoubtedly a bit of both.

Unfortunately on this occasion I had little chance to chat with Geraldine and John because no sooner had we launched and got started on our exercise than we sighted a flare and went to investigate, (don't worry Gloria...all part of the exercise)!

Coming alongside what appeared to be another lifeboat it quickly became apparent that they had had some sort of dramatic incident and required urgent assistance. I went aboard initially to assess how many casualties there were. As is often the case in these scenarios, there was a man overboard (immediately ties up one boat searching and limits options for casualty evacuation). There was also a seriously injured man who had fallen through a hatch (although it was difficult to access him initially and make a full assessment, the mechanism of injury led me to expect a spinal injury, possibly a break and likely internal injuries). There was the usual 'red-herring' of someone panicking with sea-sickness and a quiet one who appeared shocked. Plenty to keep us busy!

I made the decision to act as the comms person and requested as many first aiders as were available to come and deal with the casualties. Very soon Kev, John, Daz and Nick were onboard and completing their full assessments on the casualties. Not surprisingly the fellow who had fallen began to deteriorate with increasing 'Capillary refill' and reducing breathing rate. Quite rightly Kev and John assessed him as having an internal bleed and flagged him up a priority 1 for immediate evacuation.

In a very short space of time the man-overboard had been found, all casualties dealt with and the stricken vessel taken in tow back to the station. After a quick de-brief and not so quick crew-meeting it was time for a pint in the Red Lion then home to bed.

All good.

The Wiseleys

So I mentioned that we had our Lifeboat Christmas party last Friday. Needless to say it was a great success. In a large part this was due to the awesome Wiseleys agreeing to come and play for us again.

Sadly lacking Katie Wiseley they were still incredible and filled our small venue with great music which soon had us all dancing with style.

So...thanks John.

and Darrell

and Gary...see you in the summer?

In the Bleak Midwinter...

Lifeboatmen go paddling. With the end of term at school has come a brief lull in the rain, so today I took advantage of this by paddling my kayak along my favourite stretch of coast with some friends as I often do at this time of year.

After a slightly tentative start paddling round Peveril Point, we got into the lee of the cliffs around Durlston Head and had a lovely, if occasionally lumpy ride on the ebb tide down towards St Aldhelm's Head.

Once there we stopped briefly on a small cobbled beach for a snack before the last stretch over Kimmeridge ledges.

Both Andy and Mark had come prepared with sweet stuff unlike me so I enjoyed their extras.

And that was it, a classic December day, crisp, sunny and memorable...thanks guys.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
(Words: Christina Rossetti)

The Rose Bowl

So last night was our Christmas party. I'm afraid the whole experience is still proving a little painful so I will write more in the morning. However, I would like to announce that this year John Deere presented the Rose Bowl (given annually to the crewmember having performed the most memorable act during the year) to Dan. Due to the precise circumstances of the act I can't disclose exactly what he won it for. Nevertheless, congratulations Dan...a richly deserved award!

(Thanks to Sophie Atkinson for the photo)

Great lives

Over the last few days Dave and I have added a few more potted biographies to the crew website. If you want to have a look at them click here then click on crew then information and choose the rogue you want to find out more about. I've tried to keep it light-hearted but without being too frivolous or indeed offensive! Hopefully I achieved this...added so far are Martin, Rob, Paul Elleray, Skid, Kev and Ant. The rest to follow over the next couple of days.

Sunny spells

It seems like the rain hasn't stopped for months. My daily drive to work involves passing several rivers and each has been beyond the bounds of it's banks for months now. Despite this, Sunday morning heralded a brief moment of sunshine amongst the dark clouds, and both the ILB and one of the rowing club gigs took advantage of it. Needless to say the rain soon returned and it was situation normal. Don't you just love this global warming?

Super Sunday

Through the winter we are exercising every Wednesday night in the dark so once a month (the first) we go out on a Sunday morning so we can experience being at sea in the daylight. Except, this morning everyone was engaged doing other things elsewhere so there were too few crew present to make it worth launching the ALB.

Still, the ILB went out and Gav, Oli and Sam had a good trip by the looks of it.

Being on my own with the girls this weekend I was late down and arrived just as they got back in and were in the process of washing down their kit.

Somehow Gav (helmsman) got left with washing the boat off...clearly he has failed to educate the youth fully!

Meanwhile, Deasy and Daz were busy taking part in a local duathlon over in Rempstone forest.

I nipped over there on the way to get our Christmas tree and caught some of the action, needless to say it was a hot, sweaty and muddy activity though it seemed to be being enjoyed by all who took part. Well done lads!

RNLI online advent calendar

Trying to summon up the energy to get in the Christmas spirit and spotted this online, not sure how it works but looks cool...Merry Christmas everyone!!

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)