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n February 14th 2000 I upped sticks and moved to a little rocky island off the west coast of Galway, I had previously been there for a day, a fine, fiery Irish girl persuaded me. Anyway we split up after 6 months and I stayed, being a stranger in a strange land where English is not the first language and generally being in a dark place things were very tough. I had a job and chap I worked for gave me a bit of an old building to live in. I had a huge picture window overlooking the harbour, the Atlantic was 12’ away and the lifeboat shed was maybe 30’ away, as I did not have much to do I got talking to the crew. An idea started to form, so I said I would like to join, as far as I could see all they did was mess about and take patients from the islands (Aran Islands =3) to the mainland. I was WRONG. I was accepted, I lied about my ability to swim and did not mention no history at sea and being quite afraid of water. Anyway to cut a long story short there was call out before I had received any training, the pagers had not worked, I lived next door so was rudely woken at 4am in November in a bitching storm and taken to sea. Blowing to a max of force 10, 30 miles out in the Atlantic with a smashed trawler, 5 people on board (should be 7) me with no idea and one lad just 18 and not much experience. We spent 18 hours out there with no food and just a can of pop each. We all won awards that day, made the papers, TV and radio, even got a mention in a book. Wild, weird, wonderful times were had, I packed it in at the end of 2005 to move back to England, Strangely I was only seasick once, on my last call out. Our boat was amazing, we were flown to Poole many times for training and they decided as well as crew they would teach me navigating and engineering. . Boat, Severn Class Ref, 17-06 Crew, 7 (yeah right) Length, 17m Weight, 42 tonnes (crane added later, 45 tonnes) Fuel, 5600L Engines, 2x V12 Cat turbo diesels Power 2400bhp
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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hopeso
Part of things
Posts: 340
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Apr 30, 2020 12:40:20 GMT
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Brilliant!!
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Apr 30, 2020 15:37:25 GMT
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It always gets me when they do that ‘saving lives at sea’ programme and the usual comment is ‘ oh, we’re not heroes ‘ Allow me to disagree most strongly with that statement Oh yes you are!
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moglite
Part of things
Posts: 815
Club RR Member Number: 144
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My old lifeboatmoglite
@moglite
Club Retro Rides Member 144
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Apr 30, 2020 16:03:37 GMT
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A worthy way to spend you time, and thanks for posting the story, and the pictures of a brilliant lifeboat.
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1967 Morris Oxford Traveller 1979 Toyota LandCruiser BJ40 1993 Daimler Double Six 2007 Volvo XC70 2.4D
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Apr 30, 2020 17:15:17 GMT
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Nice story, you've got bigger man spuds than me that's for sure!
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Have a nice tale. Young girl on holiday on the island fell off a bicycle and broke her arm, Marion the doctor patched her up and we launched to take her and her mum to the mainland, choppy seas so it was uncomfortable for the little angel. We brought our ‘make a fuss’ A game, kept her entertained and did everything we could to keep her happy. Couple of weeks later we received a little parcel, inside was a note a card and a box of chocolates. The girl, once she was home and sorted had asked her mum if instead of her pocket money could she send us some chocolate and a thank you card. Now it may not seem much and we got lots of verbal thanks but it touched us all, 16 years later and I can still see her face trying to smile.
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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A ‘f**k that was close’ tale. Daylight, bit of a swell, 80’ wooden fishing boat was sinking off the back of the island, we were called out. We got there and she was down, sea a couple of inches from the deck. I’m in charge of our deck crew, (3) we pulled alongside, spoke to the skipper, he had all his crew and no injuries or animals on board. It was close to pointless but you try anyway, I jumped over with another lad, we manhandled a pump over and fired it up. 10” diameter pipe so it does a great job, after 5 minutes we were getting nowhere. Decision made with our cox, were outa there, send our lad over, send the 5 fishermen over, send the pump over. I check everywhere not underwater and beckon for our boat to come alongside, it does. I step onto ours, take a couple of paces so I can talk to our cox who is up in the outer control box, he looks at me funny and points. Last foot of the trawler bow was just disappearing, look on his face was WTF, don’t know why but I roared laughing. Sat n the back of the deck on the way back, enjoying a well earned fag, thought to myself, hmmmm, that could have gone differently. We discussed this amongst ourselves later, 3 of our boys all have/had trawlers we suspected a self inflicted sinking. NB, most of the crew that were lifelong fishermen/skippers would not wear a life jacket, they wanted it over quick.
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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Living on Anglesey, a place like many others around the UK and Irish coastline with a huge lifeboat heritage. The lifeboat crews will at any hour of the day or night, whatever the weather,selflessly risk their own lives in order to rescue others.
I don't want to sound patronising but these crews both male and female are real heroes we should look up to,and, be thankful for their commitment.
It is unfortunate that a very large percentage of Lifeboat calls are down to inexperienced people taking unnecessary risks and quite often not realising how dangerous our coastal waters can be as a playground, many blissfully unaware of local tidal conditions and how quickly small changes in wind and weather can affect their safety.
Thank you all Lifeboat crews.
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Living on Anglesey, a place like many others around the UK and Irish coastline with a huge lifeboat heritage. The lifeboat crews will at any hour of the day or night, whatever the weather,selflessly risk their own lives in order to rescue others. I don't want to sound patronising but these crews both male and female are real heroes we should look up to,and, be thankful for their commitment. It is unfortunate that a very large percentage of Lifeboat calls are down to inexperienced people taking unnecessary risks and quite often not realising how dangerous our coastal waters can be as a playground, many blissfully unaware of local tidal conditions and how quickly small changes in wind and weather can affect their safety. Thank you all Lifeboat crews. I met the Moelfre and Trearddur bay crews years ago, wife and I were having a few days away in N Wales, saw the stations and just called in, I was given a lovely welcome 👍
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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Living on Anglesey, a place like many others around the UK and Irish coastline with a huge lifeboat heritage. The lifeboat crews will at any hour of the day or night, whatever the weather,selflessly risk their own lives in order to rescue others. I don't want to sound patronising but these crews both male and female are real heroes we should look up to,and, be thankful for their commitment. It is unfortunate that a very large percentage of Lifeboat calls are down to inexperienced people taking unnecessary risks and quite often not realising how dangerous our coastal waters can be as a playground, many blissfully unaware of local tidal conditions and how quickly small changes in wind and weather can affect their safety. Thank you all Lifeboat crews. I met the Moelfre and Trearddur bay crews years ago, wife and I were having a few days away in N Wales, saw the stations and just called in, I was given a lovely welcome 👍 I've literally just been in Moelfre, seen a few people with little boats by the sea, and thought about the lifeboat crew, this should be a time of rest from tourist idiots for them, unfortunately on my round around Anglesey people are still clearly breaking lockdown to go for a trip using the back roads.
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Being many generations removed from the old country I was amazed to learn, from books as a child, of the existence of Lifeboats in the UK and Ireland. We have nothing like that here in New Zealand.
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I got very annoyed with the national lottery a few years ago when they refused a payment to the RNLI because they don’t address a deprived section of the community , or words to that effect RNLI response? ‘We’re very sorry, we rescue anybody!’ Part of the reason I stopped playing the lottery
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I got very annoyed with the national lottery a few years ago when they refused a payment to the RNLI because they don’t address a deprived section of the community , or words to that effect RNLI response? ‘We’re very sorry, we rescue anybody!’ Part of the reason I stopped playing the lottery Being the only English man on our boat (and once the only one not called John) covering offshore very rural Ireland, I did consider refusing to rescue catholic’s, decided to keep it to myself though 😁
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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^^^ probably for the best, particularly since you said swimming isn’t a strong point of yours!😱
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^^^ probably for the best, particularly since you said swimming isn’t a strong point of yours!😱 Wife taught me to swim about 6 years ago, I had to confess as I had a bit of a panic, we were in Egypt and she fancied scuba diving, I thought ‘how hard can it be’ For me turned out very hard and totally freaked me out, never been out of my depth before without a life jacket and now I’m underwater and water started coming in the mask. That was bad as my whole life I believed if water got in your eyes or nose it burned them, then I started to thing many ridiculous things and lost it 😁
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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Great job, when i saw the title I thought you had bought one to do up!
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It will come in handy even if you never use it
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Great job, when i saw the title I thought you had bought one to do up! Oh if only I could, might struggle with the fuel bills 😔
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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I remember having a few beers in the George and Dragon in Beaumaris and some of the crew were in as well. Kicked off beautifully when the old AA advert, "The 4th emergency service" came on tele!
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I remember having a few beers in the George and Dragon in Beaumaris and some of the crew were in as well. Kicked off beautifully when the old AA advert, "The 4th emergency service" came on tele! Oh do not even go there, I was so bad with it my wife used to grab the tv remote and turn it off very quickly
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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An exercise story. There were 2 Irish coast guard helicopters stationed at Shannon, they as we did constantly trained. My first joint exercise apparently I have to be ‘initiated’. Picture the scene, it is dark, it is raining otherwise weather and sea are ok. We take the boat out 10 miles offshore, I am told what we are going to do, hmmmmmmm, remove my life jacket and yellow suit, put on a 1 piece fleece, put on a dry suit, horrible thing that is really tight on the throat, helmet with visor and shoulder pieces and a manual life jacket (normal is inflate on water contact) I’m then asked to jump in the Atlantic Ocean. I can not say no as I am afraid of water and can’t swim 😁 So I do it, it’s not that bad, did I mention that the boat then leaves (position plotted and cox knows all the currents, I have flares) Once you can not see the boat the demons come, you are alone in the dark in the ocean in hundreds of feet of water. My brain went into overdrive, all sorts of sea monsters were circling under me, funny I never worried about not being found. There is a beacon light on my helmet, don’t want to make it to hard for the chopper. After what seems like a week I can hear a noise, turning in the water I can see a blinking light, as it gets closer the searchlight comes on, they also have heat cameras, did not take them long to spot me then, pretty relieved I can tell you. Winchman comes down the wire, hooks me up, takes me up, yeah !!!!! Had time to be shown all the search equipment then it’s time to put me back. Not into the water, onto a 6’ square on the boat, winchman goes first then me, all in all a fabulous evening, my first time under and in a helicopter. When they find you It give a small insight into what genuine people feel when they see us coming to get them.
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Bicycle x1 Alfa Giulietta (now wife's) Alfa 156 BMW 630i
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