Thursday 14 June 2012

Beach Wardens, Farmers and a Service.

Early start yesterday when Phil the Station Officer from Southbourne came over to do some work at Swanage.  As volunteers we all have our normal work to do and in the case of Phil he runs a garden machinery and engineering firm.  Whilst we hoped Phil was going to cut the grass he actually came to service the generator, the winch and repair our metal stakes.  As a fellow Station Officer we of course drank a couple cups of coffee and put the Coastguard world in order.

We then hosted the Beach Wardens at the station for their annual refresher training with an input from the Police and RNLI. 

Finally in the evening about 30 people arrived at the station for a talk on the Coastguard.  I wrongly reported this was a Young Farmers group, well the group were very pleased to be called young but in fact were a group of farmers from around the Purbecks. 

Farmers are very important to the Coastguard as we often have to cross their land so its good to keep good relations.  The most important point of the night was to raise the profile of the Coastguard as often people get us confused with the RNLI.  As the chairman said they were expecting a boat and wondered why we were based in a car park and not on the sea front. 
We really enjoy giving talks as its a way the community can see the work we do which often goes unreported.

Just a typical day for a Coastguard team

1 comment:

JohnB said...

Sounds like you had a buisy day at the station. Hope you had enough biscuits to go round, now did you actually get them out? share and be fare.(probably kept the choccy ones in the draw!)
Wish I was there, probably known some of the farmers!