This Sunday, the weather was wet and a little windy, but compared to the recent thrashing from Storm Erik, the whole beach seemed remarkably calm. However, the point of the tide at the time of training and the fact that further high winds were predicted, meant that we focused on ‘dry’ training.

Of course, ‘dry’ training still involves a certain amount of getting wet! Kev mobilised our recovery vehicle, to take the boat to a few different locations and environments on the beach (shingle and sand) so that the teams could practice supporting the recovery of the boat into the trailer from the different surfaces of the beach, as shown:

Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat, Sunday training, beach recoveryPett Level Independent Rescue Boat, Sunday training, beach recoveryPett Level Independent Rescue Boat, Sunday training, beach recovery

Training then moved indoors as base and boat crews spent time with our first aid kits. There are three good reasons why it’s important for us to do this:

  • For those of us who completed first aid training last summer, it’s useful to revisit everything in the kits.
  • For those who have not yet completed first aid training, seeing what’s in the kits is useful pre-training and familiarisation.
  • It’s good-practice to check through the first aid kits to check that everything is present and in-date.

Then training moved onto knot-practice for volunteers who still need to rehearse this as part of their training, whilst essential maintenance on the vehicles was carried out by our mechanic volunteers. Other trainees were also given GPS training, as knowing the techniques as well as the technology is also a vital part of success at sea.

Then it was time for a debrief and planning for future training. The next one’s coming around soon as we’ve also got mid-week training during the coming week – with our re-visit to RNLI Hastings on Thursday 14th (yes, a real save-the-date moment with our RNLI colleagues). We’re looking forward to this, particularly seeing their wonderful Shannon boat, and will update on here to share how the training goes.

We’re also planning another night-training session in the next few weeks, tide, moon and weather permitting. After such a long winter, it’s strange to now be trying to schedule this in for this month or the very start of March before the clocks change again!

In all, it was a busy morning at the boat house, with plenty going on and a considerable amount of planning for future work. If you’d like to be a part of it all, please contact us.