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Safety Boat Course

During the autumn Colin, Graham and John Webb were able to join a safety boat course at Woolverstone to enhance/update rescue techniques in a range of powerboats on tidal water.  We were delighted to find a Rigiflex New-matic 360 with a 15Hp engine amongst the boats we were to use, unfortunately all of them were just finishing a fairly hard season and tested us all at times, but more of that later. 

Our instructors, Stuart and Gavin, soon got us onto the river and handed over the controls to familiarise ourselves with the different types of boat.  Apart from one little incident, when we found ourselves accelerating towards the jetty and a moored boat, the session went extremely well.  Following this the instructors explained that sometimes it was a good idea to set training boats up, like learner driver cars, with dual controls! 

The rest of the time on the water that day was spent in one or two-man groups refreshing boat-handling techniques on flowing tidal water.  One of us and the instructor was in the Rigiflex, the same as we were planning to purchase as a replacement for the Dory for this coming season.  The other two and an instructor were in the RIB, which was a slightly higher performance version of the Avon RIB at Lackford. 

We were all impressed with stability, manoeuvrability and performance of the Rigiflex, even though the controls were not as positive as they would be on our new boat.  The engine on the RIB was a slightly reluctant starter at the best of times and started with a small puff of smoke when it did.  This smoke got worse each time until we had just completed a perfect recovery of a man overboard in the middle of the shipping lane when it would not start again.  Then it was the turn of the students to instruct the instructors in the finer points of manually starting an electric-start engine!  Our boy scout mechanic soon had the covers off the engine with his multi-tool and some thin cord around the pulley. Unfortunately the cord wasn't quite up to the strength required to start a 50Hp engine!  Thankfully the other team responded to our cry for help on the radio and were able to practice their towing in a real situation!   

By Sunday morning a replacement RIB, in the form of an Avon Sea-rider, was on its way and gave us an opportunity to try another type of hull design.  We were also joined by two volunteers to act as casualties, but weren't sure what they had done to deserve to spend quite so much time in the icy November water.  We'll refer to the volunteers as Girl and Boy, as one was a charming young lady who made our rescues a delight and the other was a young lad who turned all his rescues into a problem…but he was probably preparing for a life on the stage! 

Just to illustrate our problems Boy was sent off in a Wayfarer to accidentally capsize, just like some of you do at Lackford.  By the time we got there he had managed to get his mast well buried in the mud at the bottom of the river and was suffering from hypothermia.  Before we could right his boat we had to calm him, stop his ranting and prevent him from swimming away from the boat and safety.  None of us had experienced this sort of hypothermic reaction before and were relieved, on this occasion, to find it was only an act.  Righting the capsized boat gave us several opportunities to employ different techniques, including one we had not tried before.  Our first attempts of this technique certainly provided onlookers with some entertainment, as all the power of the RIB was not enough and needed some finesse to ensure success. 

Meanwhile the Rigiflex was operating in more confined, shallower waters within the Marina rescuing the Girl from Windsurfing and Canoeing incidents.  This was all going well until a group turned up and launched their Jet-skis into the same bit of water.  One Jet-ski started but tried to pull the trailer in with it as it wasn't untied, the other floated away, but wouldn't start.  Colin's training was interrupted a little later rescuing one of them from their dodgy position at the mouth of the Marina. 

We managed to cram a huge amount of practical and theoretical training into a very enjoyable weekend.  We are all very grateful to have had the opportunity to improve our Safety Boat Skills and are looking forward to putting them into practice in the coming season.