Sea Survival day 2

Another fantastic day today, we covered absolutely loads. We started off at 8.15 with a classroom session on fire fighting and prevention, which was really informative. after an hour to an hour and a half of that we headed down to the pontoons and were split into three groups for practical activities. My group strated off with pyrotechnics being talked through flares and firing the flares we would ordinarily carry in our life jackets. One end is orange smoke for daytime use and the other Red pinpoint for nighttime. After that my group moved onto fire fighting, having the opportunity to try and number of different fire extinguishers, finally we went and had a look at salvage pumps, both the ones they have on an ALB and the one we'd carry at the ILB on our station.

After all that we had forty five minutes or so for lunch then those of us who had aAtlantic ILB's on station had to get kitted up in Dry suits for capsize practice in the sea survival pool. While everything on the course has been great so far, much of it has really just been reinforcing the excellent training we get on station from the experienced crew there, but things like capsize and fire fighting aren't practical to cover anything other than theory on station so it was great to get a chance to try it out. Again we were split into groups and, when our turn came, they cranked up the wave machine and we jumped into the pool then climbed into an Atlantic 75, slightly smaller than the 85 we have on station, but pretty similar other than that. Once we have recapped the briefing we were told to get into position and a crane hoisted us upside down. We had to call out our seat numbers first so we knew everyone was ok then make our way to the front of the boat where we deployed the sea anchor which would keep us head to weather and stop us drifting too fast. Then one by one we made our way from the air chamber under the boat, beneath the sponson to the outside of the boat where we slapped the side to let our fellow crew and the instructor know we were out.

Once everyone was safely out we all made our way to the back of the boat and once two of us had released the safety line and swam to it's full extension the person designated as helm pulled the release for the automatic righting system and twenty or thirty seconds later the boat was the right way up. All that remained was to get back in, do the essential checks recover the sea anchoer and safety line then re-start the boat.

After that we did various methods of getting both ourselves and casualties from the water into the boat which was also great fun.

After all that excitement we were back out to the pontoons where we looked at dealing with an engine fire on a lifeboat then some ropework and mooring and berthing. We finally finished around half past five although the whole day seemed to go really quickly.

Tomorrow is a day of boat handling where other than an hour briefing in the morning we'll be out driving the boats all day. Yet again I'm really looking forward to it.