Today’s training … low tide, high risk manoeuvres!

This weekend saw some beautiful weather along the Pett coastline, although as the season’s changing, so is the temperament – and temperature – of the water!

Despite being a low tide on Sunday (16th September 2018) the high winds created a very swollen, rolling sea which provided the perfect setting for two-man crew casualty recovery training.  This involved practising recovery of a person overboard in fairly rough seas. Rather than put a crew member at risk in the swollen sea, the crews used a buoy as the person, in this training scenario.

For this, the Tornado boat was launched, with successive two-man crews as running the training scenario across several crew changes allowed as many trainees as possible to take part and practise, and also allowed for different team dynamics across the crew pairs. This gave many volunteers to work in a crew with someone they may not have teamed up with before.

In their pairs, each team practised manoeuvring the boat in rough conditions. Continued practice of this kind of rescue in all types of tidal, weather and beach conditions is essential so that rescue teams can rehearse best-practice for recovery, i.e. minimum risk and endangerment to crew, boat and any casualty in the water.

On manoeuvres along the shorelineBringing the Tornado rescue boat into shoreGetting the Tornado boat safely to shoreUploading Tornado rescue boat to trailer

And it wasn’t just our own volunteers practising for all eventualities today … everyone down at the boat house and on the beach was treated to a very close up fly-by from our rescue colleagues in the coastguard helicopter, who were heading to the cliff face at Fairlight for their own training manoeuvres. In all, a busy day’s training for local teams!