At the Helm

I've just passed my final assessment for becoming a full inshore helmsman for the RNLI. I'm well chuffed.

It's a difficult balance between wanting to lead a service on the sea and hoping that nobody gets into enough trouble to need us. Thankfully, most of the shouts we get are people cut off by the tide or boats needing a tow and are generally not life threatening.

Don't forget to keep an eye on the tide when walking on the coast. Tide timetables are available locally and also online. They are different by region, so one for Brighton is no good for Blackpool. Google will provide you with a relevant link. Note also that times for high and low tide change daily and tide height, and hence speed of change, also changes, so the tide profile from one week will be significantly different to the next. Weather can have a significant effect too.

If you should get cut off by the tide, phone 999 immediately and ask for the Coastguard. These guys manage the cliff teams, lifeboats and choppers. We'd much rather come out early than late. Don't try to climb dangerous cliffs and don't try to swim out of trouble, you may get caught in a rip tide and taken out to sea.

Keep calm, get as high as you can safely and make yourself obvious to anyone who comes. They may be arriving from the sea, the air or from the land, so you need to be visible from all of these if you can do so safely.

Be as specific as you can when describing your emergency. Include your position, number of people, clothing and ages, if significant. Include any medical issues, including such things as dehydration, hypothermia, sprained ankles or specific medical conditions such as diabetes, heart condition or pregnancy. If you intend to move from your present position, be as specific as you can describing your intentions.

Remember, rescue starts when they know you are in trouble and starts looking where they think you are. The earlier you call and the more accurate you can be with your location, the more quickly you can be found.

If you don't know where you are, any information is good information. An example might go along the lines of:

"We're looking out to sea and the sun is directly in front of us. There is a lighthouse on a rock to my right. There is a big red tanker going from left to right a long way away. We left Bucks Mills an hour ago heading for Westward Ho! We passed some red cliffs half an hour ago and we're in a cove with a rocky beach. The cliffs are very steep. The tide is about 20 metres away and we intend to climb the rocks to a safe ledge which is about eight feet off the beach".

This will give the coastguard and lifeboat crew a significant chance of pinpointing your position, even though it doesn't contain any accurate distances, bearings or times.

On a final note, if you should manage self rescue, do let the coastguard know. Don't be embarrassed that you may have wasted their time, they would much rather you have call and they not be needed than the opposite.

I remember a particular shout where a man had been cut off by the tide. We searched for two hours before finding out that he had long since made it off the coast and to the pub where he was enjoying a pint.

Mutter mutter!

Disengage, Parry, Lunge

I've just managed to find the time to watch the first episode of Bruce Parry's new series Arctic with Bruce Parry which is being shown on BBC 2 and likely, unless you're reading this much later than I wrote it, to be on BBC iPlayer (tm). I first got into Bruce Parry with the TV Series Tribe which is absolutely excellent. I have the DVD box set and it regularly comes out for a rewatch. I found his next series Amazon quite hard going, but this new one seems to be getting back to his old style.

I'm constantly astounded by his apparent innocence and naivety, which seems odd for an ex-marine, but let's face it, if he went into a tribe of potential cannibals acting like Bear Grylls, he'd have probably been in a stew long ago. Can you imagine Bear's poor cameraman in the next pot? Bruce seems to have a knack for getting involved and is not scared to try anything, be it labour, a pint of blood, the local brew of fermented misc or the shaman's lotions & potions, some of which look quite harrowing.

Bruce is a friend of a friend of mine who met him near to where he lives in Ibiza. Apparently he's quite a party animal. He's also hung like a horse, I hear, and if you've watched his first documentary he did, First Contact - Cannibals and Crampons, which Bruce and his mate shot, you'll find a funny bit in there about that. C&C is a real eye opener in terms of the sorts of things that can go wrong if you're unprepared, which they both were. It's worth a watch and is part of the bonus features of the Tribe box set.

It's nice to watch a series dedicated to the Arctic which is not, at least initially, plastered in snow. It's quite normal for southerly regions within the Arctic Circle (66° 33' N) to have summer temperatures up to 10 °C (50 °F). Certainly, where I was in Finland, the land was lush in the summer. It was shocking for growing veg, but excellent walking. There was a pretty nasty midge issue during the thaw which caused such a problem with the huskies that they were transported to Helsinki until it all froze up again.

In a prolonged Arctic survival situation, the seasonal changes in temperature can be extreme and change can come quickly, so ensure you are prepared to move if you need to. Remember also that the temperature on the coast can be vastly different to that of inland regions. In the summer, inland regions may be warmer, but as winter comes, the coast is the place to be. Don't head in a northerly direction to get to the sea though, because as we know, it gets colder the further north we go (in this part of the world) and that would be counter productive. Watch out for those insects too, they can really spoil your day.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series which is likely to get a lot chillier and I hope, one day, to meet the man himself. I think I'll have a look and see if he's doing a tour soon. Oh, his website is buggered. Ho hum.