Search and Rescue

I'm scheduled to do the RNLI's week long NAVSAR (search and rescue navigation) course at the Lifeboat College in September so I'm trying to get some practice in. Last week I received some hands on training from one of the crew who has just completed the course and we plotted a search pattern to find a crate weighted down to simulate a person in the water which we'd put out an hour earlier off Salen. Tonight we decided to make it more realistic and the lovely guys on the Cal Mac ferry which runs between Tobermory and Kilchoan dropped the target over the side on their last run back into Tobermory just under an hour before we were due to go out on our weekly training session. I was given the position and time and then had to plot the position which it was likely to have drifted to and plan the search pattern. All of this involves charts (obviously!), some mathematical formulae and geometry as well as a stopwatch (the latter is for timing the length of the legs of the search pattern). We found the target on our first leg, I'm pleased to say. Although the boys had already seen it on arrival in the search area, they decided not to tell me partly because I was absorbed in plotting and calculating but they also wanted to see how close my estimated position would be. We then headed off to do some anchoring in Bloody Bay before being treated to some lovely light as we steamed past Rubha nan Gall.