RNLI West Mersea attends double shout on first day in temporary home
The volunteer crew at West Mersea Lifeboat Station attended two shouts in the afternoon after temporarily housing their lifeboat Just George in a local boat shed whilst renovations are carried out at the lifeboat station.
On Monday 25 October, phase 2 of the renovations to West Mersea Lifeboat Station began. As this part of the renovation involved removing the old boathouse flooring, West Mersea Lifeboat Just George had been housed in a nearby boat shed belonging to Stuart and Charlotte Cock.
Having moved the lifeboat in the morning, the volunteers were paged at 2.28pm to reports of a seriously ill casualty on board a vessel in Salcott Channel. Although not as easy to launch from the temporary home, Just George was launched within 10 minutes and arrived on scene quickly.
Having assessed the casualty, the lifeboat called Dover Coastguard to request immediate medivac and brought both the casualty and a crew member from the vessel back onto shore where Community First Responders and West Mersea Coastguard Rescue Team were waiting.
The Coastguard Rescue had alerted East of England Ambulance Service who dispatched paramedics by ambulance and an air ambulance due to the high tide. The casualty was stabilised and left in the care of the paramedics who later transported them by ambulance to hospital.
After handing over the casualty to the Coastguard Rescue Team and Community First Responders, the crew had just begun to clean down when a second call came through from Dover Coastguard to reports that a tender had been spotted capsized near Tollesbury and the lifeboat launched again.
Arriving on scene the tender was almost fully submerged but was tied to a yacht at anchor. After boarding the yacht and finding no-one aboard, the lifeboat began to search for a possible person overboard. Dover Coastguard instructed the lifeboat to stand down as a message had been received from a local sailing club that they were aware of the tender as the owner had told them it was leaking and they had use of another tender.
RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager, Rick Boreham said: 'Today showed that we are very lucky in many ways. Firstly, that our excellent inter-agency training means that we are able to assist in helping seriously ill people get the medical help they need whilst out on the water, but also that we are lucky to have such local support for the lifeboat.
'Without having the use of a temporary boat shed we would not be able to be on-service and today’s events, particularly the first shout, could have had a very different outcome.'
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