Filing passage plans with CG

[jwalker]

Originally Posted by DJL

I have been called on VHF by Portland Coastguard after a solo night passage from Cowes to Poole in nasty weather. It took me an hour longer than expected and they called me 30mins after my original est arrival time.

Excellent.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by jwalker

I call if I'm leaving a car overnight because folk around the harbour generally keep an eye open for activity and could get alarmed if I didn't return at night. I use the phone for this call so that I don't tell everyone where my car is sitting unattended. I did this one time and a few weeks later found that there had been a call to the CG for that very reason but the watch had changed and the new folk hadn't noticed the notes about me. The local part time CG (who related the story to me) had been called to check things out. They finally got it sorted and found the notes about me so all was OK.

Jeff - it seems the locals in your part of the world are indeed very attentive to cars being left for long periods: http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga-pr...B1A&m=2&y=2008

I think that has convinced me that I will certainly file a plan when not planning to return to my car at the end of the day.

[jwalker]

Yep, folk do look out for others. We do a similar thing here when folk go off walking in the woods.
The kayakers did well though, the Isle of May is a long paddle from North Berwick. However, I do think they should have had the foresight to let the CG know of their intentions. It was a thick fog today and they will have had to cross the shipping too. It's not so much a channel there, the ships could be anywhere. A bit scatterbrained, maybe. The island is a reserve, I wonder whether they got permission to camp.

[SeaSkills]

Yes, they had permission. They had also left information with their own shore contacts and with the police. The weather was clear on their outward passage, and haar not forecast.

We would have found it easier if their plan had also been left with HMCG, but overall - hard to fault them, I wish more people were as well prepared. OK, we had several lifeboats and beach rescue teams searching for them in very difficult conditions (vis about 20m) - but if there was a fault it wasn't really there's, the route to tracking back their intended plan to where they had left it didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked

[jwalker]

Originally Posted by SeaSkills

Yes, they had permission. They had also left information with their own shore contacts and with the police. The weather was clear on their outward passage, and haar not forecast....
.....- hard to fault them, I wish more people were as well prepared.

Cool.

[AndyB007]

Thanks for starting this thread - it's a question I've often pondered but have only done it once (from Weymouth to Southampton in heavier-than-forecast weather).

Andy