View Single Post
Old 17 March 2009, 16:59   #52
Doug Stormforce
Member
 
Country: UK - England
Town: Southampton
Boat name: Yoda & Obi Wan
Make: XS700
Length: 7m +
Engine: 200 HP
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 1,032
Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaSkills View Post
It's probably something to do with the 2-day training course for RNLI flare demonstrators, the several pages of risk assessment needed for every demonstration, and the many phone calls and emails before each event to advise the coastguard, police, fire service, air traffic control, local lifeboat etc etc (and calling them again immediately before and after the event to remind them).

No distress flares are used, just hand-held smokes, and white pinpoints and parachutes.

Nonetheless, the wind-up call to the coastguard afterwards always includes feedback on how many 999 calls came in
Clearly different organistaion go about things differently

We have been providing flare demonstations and in fact letting students have a go at firing live flares since the business started (2001). I think it is one of the most valuable bits of training we provide and it is a key featurs of our Sea Survival course.

Flares are potentially very dangerous, but if used correctly are safe. They have to be treated with respect but I believe the experience of firing them for real in a controlled environment better equips you for the day you might need to use them for real.

We have a short writen policy on how the session is to be run. Its basically common sense but we give new Sea Survival and ISAF Instructors a short training session on how to deliver the session themselves.

We don't call anyone until about 3 minutes before we start, then we call Solent Coast Guard and tell them what we are up to. At the end of the sesison we call them again. We do not call anyone else. At a quick estimate I would say we have run well over 500 of these sessions and to date had no problmes.

We do the session on the water front of the River Itchen, the Itchen is used by most aircraft landing at Southampton Airport for their pilotage. No one has yet complained. We dont email anybody, we dont bother talking to the local lifeboat as they are co ordinated by the Coast Guard, we dont bother talking to the Police as they would only pass anything onto the Coast Guard.
__________________
Doug Stormforce is offline   Reply With Quote