Wednesday 12 November 2014

Cliff Tech Training Weekend

This weekend saw the SCOO (Senior Coastal Operations Officer) or Allan as we call him,  organise a Cliff Technician Weekend.

A full weekend of cliff training the technicians - the ones that go over the cliff! Some were re-qualifying, some qualifying for the first time. We also had John Evans from St Albans - as guest trainer.

Saturday saw Coastguards from Southborne, Swanage and St Albans (Poole are a mud team - not cliff) all meeting at the Dorset Fire and Rescue Fire Station at Holes Bay. The day basically involved refreshing and learning skills on a vertical tower while getting wet. Very wet indeed. If it rains we roughly toughly coastguards just carry on - while the fire service chaps watch on and laugh from the comfort of there warm and dry restroom.

But to start we were diverted to McDonalds for a breakfast.


...and then to the tower to get soaked.



Soaked. 
Once suitably wet....we started training.


Vertical 

Kerry taking the stretcher over.

More photos of Saturday here.


Sunday saw better weather and we popped over to St Albans to get their kit all wet and muddy!




Allan offering words of advice



Kerry and Nick on the face

Kerry has only been in the Coastguard a year or so, but as a Climbing Instructor she was thrown over the cliff to get her Tech qualification at the first opportunity.














Marc from Southborne celebrated his new Cliff Tech status by eating a whole tub of Heroes ;-) 
(The winch hiding behind him was used to pull him back up the cliff as he was full of chocolate)



Big thanks to Allan and everyone for a really fantastic weekend worth of training - special thanks to John Evans from St Albans who gave two days of his time to assist. Apologies to St Albans for nicking some of your kit ...we'll drop it back to your station this week.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didnt eat all the chocolates !! (did I ?). Great weekend to work with you guys.

Marc R

CG said...

To be fair readers, Marc fell for the 'just hold this a minute' trick....