There are two shouts to report, on this day of Storm Gerrit, a day when no right minded person, mad or otherwise, would venture out to sea.
Shout #1
I actually missed the launch for this shout, at 1512, as I was in Newport at the time. However we were finishing up our quest to the shops and made our way back home. When the “Crew Assemble” page came in 1621, I was able to respond. There were enough shore crew to get the boat home however I lent a hand with the buckets of detergent for the deck wash down exercise.
The nature of the call is reported in the local Island Echo. The boat crew went through a trial out in those stormy seas and travelled some distance to the reported location of a sinking yacht. Nothing was found and it was later determined that this was probably a hoax Mayday call.
One of the amazing things about the RNLI is that we don’t judge. If there is a life to save then we will do our best to do just that. In this case the sea took no lives in our patch this day. The crew and the boat were put through their paces and the following pictures are from the RNLI Facebook post, with credit to them. The Coxswain reported probably the worst sea conditions they had ever seen, and yet they returned with smiles on their faces. If, tomorrow, that hoaxer were to go out and get into trouble in the sea, then we would go a rescue them anyway. This is why I joined this organisation, they are beyond incredible.
The bigger concern was if we could get the boat back in. If the sea conditions are too rough then we cannot risk it, and the boat has to go and hide somewhere, probably in Portsmouth harbour. It was reported that the water was moving some 6 metres on the slipway. There is no way we can risk wading out to put the hauling line pole any further out. So it goes where we can safely put it. If the boat crew cannot reach the loop then we can’t recover the boat. Fortunately as the boat arrived the storm died down a little and the loop was captured. After that, recovery was text book.
Shout #2
The pager went off once more at 1917. I was just settling down to watch a film. Matter not, shoes and coat on and out to the car. Having got to the station I found another colleague ahead of me and running out to the off-shore boat house. I tried to keep up. He managed to get to the end, but I ran out of breath before that and had to slow down (I have to work on this!). The boat house was locked and there seemed to be an absence of other crew members following. Then we noticed they were gathered at the doors of the in-shore boat house. After checking pagers are convincing ourselves that we were at the right boat we then noticed them all strolling along the walkway. I was quite happy to be one of the first to arrive, whereas my colleague here was getting quite angry as to the relaxed nature of the rest of the crew.
I don’t have much detail and there is nothing in the public media (yet). We were requested to be ready by another service, as our resources maybe required with a situation they were handling. So we made ready for launch. I was asked to attend the Keel Strap. The winch was started and the load taken off the strap. I released the locking device and a colleague pulled the strap away and stowed it. The winch was then let out a little to allow the table to tilt and the boat to align with the slipway. The boat was ready, the crew were ready, only the locking pin needed to be removed to arm the release mechanism.
There we waited, those in the position of launch authority monitoring the radio and the phone for the final request to launch. I grabbed this picture showing the transom of the boat and the Sea Catch / Shackle / Winch cable, ready and waiting.
I’m not quite sure how long we waited but it must have been about 30 minutes, until the message was received that the situation was resolving and our help was no longer required.
So the winch was reeled in to allow the platform to level up one more. Then I was instructed to re-attach the keel strap. Once done the winch was reeled out to let the strap take the load. Job done. We removed our PPE and made our ways home.
