4/29/2023 0 Comments Rnli lifeboat![]() ![]() Of all the crewmembers, senior members such as coxswains and navigators in particular need to stay closest to the station. If both boats are deployed, it requires around half the total crew of 24. It takes seven to crew the ALB and three to crew the ILB, plus at least one winchman to get the boat down the slipway. So, in theory you can pick and choose your shouts. But arriving at the station and then explaining why you can’t go out is no help in the heat of the moment.” In certain conditions it would be wrong for some of our less experienced crew anyway. “I don’t mind if some don’t want to go on a particular shout. “Only turn up if you’re ready to go out, is my rule,” says Falmouth coxswain Mark Pollard. Indeed, in these cases the rest of the crew don’t want you there. So, once you’re in the crew, you’re on call.īut if you’re ill, tired, away or have over-indulged, you don’t have to turn up. They’ve tried rosters and agreed that it doesn’t work because it becomes a full-time job to manage who’s on and who’s off. Second, there is no duty roster, at least not at Falmouth. All crew members bar one paid mechanic and a retained coxswain are volunteers. Technically, when there’s a shout, no one has to turn up. Yet it wasn’t until I had met the crew that I fully appreciated what this really meant. It makes no odds if they are at work, at home, out for dinner or fast asleep: when the pager goes off they are on their way before it has stopped buzzing. Lifeboat crews drop everything to go out on a shout. Their all-weather lifeboat (ALB), the Richard Cox Scott, may sit at a pontoon ready to go, but unlike their rescue colleagues in the fire, ambulance or air sea rescue services, the RNLI crew are not on call at the station. How on earth do the crew manage to deploy their services at such short notice? Suddenly the scale of the problem struck home. Yet from outside the hotel’s front door and fully dressed, it took me four minutes walking at a brisk pace. My lodgings were opposite the maritime museum, a stone’s throw from the station itself and far closer than any of the crew. “Getting from home to the lifeboat station is one thing, but sometimes we have to make crucial decisions minutes after waking up.”Īs the UK took repeated batterings from an exceptional run of winter weather, I joined the Falmouth crew to find out what makes an RNLI lifeboat station and its crew tick, and later I went out with the lifeboat on exercise to practice man overboard drill. “You can be fast asleep at home in the middle of the night and 15 minutes later be attending to an accidental amputation at sea,” navigator and helmsman Dave Nicoll says. Even then, getting to the station is the easy bit. If you’re in the inshore lifeboat (ILB), the RIB that is deployed for around two-thirds of the ‘shouts’, you’ll need to shave four or five minutes off your time. Given the 12-minute average launch time for the RNLI’s Falmouth-based Severn Class lifeboat, that leaves just two minutes to establish what the emergency is about, assess the conditions, select the crew from those who turned up, get down to the lifeboat, slip her lines and get under way.Īnd that’s a leisurely deployment. If you’re part of an RNLI lifeboat crew, you’ve got just two – and that includes waking up as the pager goes off.Īdd six minutes to get to the station and another two to don your foulweather gear and lifejacket and you’re up to ten. How long would it take you to roll out of bed, dress and get out of the front door if you had to leave home in a hurry at night? Ten minutes? That’s far too long. ![]()
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