News

This page was updated on: Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Winter Training

To keep the Venturers on their toes during the off season, a Winter training day was held.

(Click on the image opposite to see larger photograph)

Four senior members launched Venturer Rescue 1 from Calshot bright and early on Sunday morning, for a navigation and boat handling exercise.

This started with tracking the course that had been plotted on Friday night at our Lepe HQ.

The first heading brought us to Wootton Creek just to the east of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, an interesting harbour entrance, which is less well known to us, as we do not need to enter this area very often because it is “covered” by our neighbours at Ryde Rescue and Cowes RNLI.

The low tide and the car ferry entering, make this harbour more challenging.

Our second destination was Cowes where we entered the marina and carried out some close quarter maneuvering. We are well known at Cowes and received plenty of waves from fellow seafarers.

After leaving Cowes and en-route to Newtown Creek on the Isle of Wight, we came across a large piece of submerged timber which we attempted to recover without any luck.

After several attempts we informed Solent Coastguard of the navigation hazard and they issued a general “securite” warning to shipping.

We continued on our course to Newtown Creek and then onto Sowley Boom, which is just between Lymington and the Beaulieu River.

Waiting just outside the Beaulieu River, Coastguard Helicopter 104 was approaching to conduct a training exercise with Venturer 1.

At first the helicopter approached low off our stern to do a visual check of our boat and we were then instructed to head into wind at fifteen knots as they began to lower the “winch man” on board.

Once onboard we were briefed on how to conduct the winching and lowering.

The first exercise was “formating.” This is where the “winch man” hangs below the helicopter Venturer 1 approaches from the side at approximately a 50 degree angle underneath.

Once in place the Helicopter keeps pace with us, whilst the “winch man” would lower into the bow area.

After four successful runs we then proceeded with a high line exercise. For this the boat is stationary in the water and the helicopter lowers a long rope line down to the boat.

The crew members then take the line in hand and the “winch man” is then lowered with the crew pulling him into the boat from the line that was lowered from the helicopter.

This was an excellent exercise and very many thanks go to the crew of Coastguard 104!
After “the icing on the cake” had made for a very enjoyable day we proceeded back to Calshot in fading light for recovery.

By Richard Watkins.