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This article is by Paul Glatzel of Powerboat Training UK and first appeared in Sportsboat & RIB Magazine.

“Portland Coastguard, Portland Coastguard, Portland Coastguard ………”

 If you boat on the South Coast in the area to the west of the Solent and monitor your VHF then there’s no doubt that you will hear plenty of conversations between boaters and the Coastguard at Portland (or Weymouth to be more precise). But what does the Coastguard do and more importantly what relevance are they to you?

 In 1998 the Government merged the Coastguard & the Marine Safety agencies to form the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (‘MCA’). The MCA has various areas of responsibility the most relevent to this article being running the Coastguard.  The Coastguard is responsible for promoting & ensuring the safety of boaters, co-ordinating Search & Rescue (‘SAR’) cover both at sea and around our shores. If you don’t hear the Coastguard on your VHF then you will certainly see them. Most of the ‘Search & Rescue’ helicopters around the UK are run by the Coastguard who also run numerous small RIBs which provide a useful safety resource to the areas in which they operate.

 To find out more about the work of the Coastguard I was invited to visit the Control Room at Portland Coastguard. I had expected the Control room to be based overlooking Portland Bill in a large tower (like Solent Coastguard) with glorious views over their domain. It was a bit surprising then to be given directions to the centre of Weymouth to an attractive but rather unexpected harbour front Victorian building – there weren’t even any large aerials to give the game away!  Based on the first floor with some nice harbour views was the Control Room. I was greeted by Ros Evans, the Duty Manager, who had been lumbered with me asking lots of questions only two hours into her 12 hour shift on the morning after returning from leave. Portland covers an area from Lyme Bay in the west (from where Brixham Coastguard take over) to Hengistbury Head just east of Poole. The area is small compared with some of the northern stations which cover huge geographical areas but, as a product of the volume of boats in the area, is consistently one of the top few stations in terms of incidents handled.

 Each shift consists of 5 people (a Duty Manager, Watch Leader and three other team members), one of the team constantly maintains a watch over channel 16 while others deal with the various calls that come in. As with any of the rescue services no two days are ever the same and the variety of calls that come in is huge. These range from the typical ‘person floating out to sea in a dinghy in an offshore wind’, through deer trapped on beaches to Mayday or Pan Pan type incidents. Calls come in direct to the Control room switchboard, via 999 or through channel 16, each call is logged with the details of the call recorded the craft involved and the nature of the request. Radio direction finding equipment allows the control room to get a rough indication of the bearing from each of their various aerials for each call which is particularly useful in calls where pinpointing a position quickly is critical ~ those in trouble all too frequently get their position wrong.

Relating to vessels, calls range from the straight forward like craft registering their intended passages (see later regarding the CG66 scheme), through innumerable ‘radio checks’ to dealing with the inevitable ‘incidents’. Portland deals with approximately 1000 incidents per year where they task resources such as the RNLI or the Coastguard helicopter to vessels in distress. Equally they call on the services or shorebased Coastguard units for cliff rescues or to search for casualties from the shore ~ hence the Coastguard 4x4s you see patrolling around or parked up overlooking the sea.  As a mayday comes in the team moves rapidly into gear initially concentrating on recording the details of the call, simultaneously they are logging it to their system and tasking rescue units such as they RNLI, helicopter crews or shorebased units. The accuracy of the initial data is critical as if contact with the vessel is lost then precious time can be lost if the call has not been accurately recorded. Constant contact with the casualty then ensues providing reassurance that assistance is on route and preparing the casualty for the arrival of the rescue crews. A common problem in the Portland area is with divers suffering the effects of the bends, such is the frequency of such incidents that Portland Coastguard will assess the situation and arrange immediate helicopter evacuation to Poole where the decompression unit awaits them rather than the more normal approach of creating a radio link between medics & the dive craft in order for the Doctors ashore to make the decision.

 The Portland station comms room is one of the last to be refitted with the new hi-tech systems now prevalent throughout the rest of the Coastguard stations, that said some of the systems already used are highly impressive. For example one of their systems works to predict the position of casualty vessel some time after it was at its last known position. The program factors in the effect of tide continually amending the rate & direction of flow according to the area. Wind effect (‘leeway’) is also accounted for giving a pretty accurate prediction of current position for the rescue services. This can be invaluable both in terms of finding casualties but also ‘tracking back’ along the route of the craft’s drift to look for debris or perhaps even a person.

 Away from the full-time Civil Service employees in the Comms room are the volunteer crews that man the RIBs, mount cliff rescues or patrol our shores co-ordinating rescues in their 4x4s. These volunteers form (like with the RNLI) an invaluable element of the SAR resources around our coastline. Those of you hoping to volunteer for the helicopters though will be disappointed to learn its not staffed by volunteers!

 If Portland Coastguard are anything to go by then should you ever land yourself in a situation that requires Coastguard assistance then you will be in good hands. The station appeared highly professional and manned by a group of dedicated individuals, the resources and equipment available was excellent – lets just hope that you never find out how good they are!!

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