Your Generosity Needed To Support NCI. Following a weekend which on three occasions saw swimmers get into difficulties off the Hot Walls beach and need to be rescued, when all were observed and monitored by NCI Watchkeepers, who on one occasion called a Mayday, it’s time to talk about Watchkeepers. All NCI Watchkeepers – including those who man the Gosport station - are volunteers. They all give their time freely and without conditions, not only when standing watches, but also when training, doing their annual assessments, and attending monthly training meetings. They do it because they believe that the job is important and worthwhile, and they want to be able to keep on doing it. To do this they ask one thing of you, and one thing only. Your support Gosport NCI station receives no public or government funding. Overall it costs at least £3000 a year to keep the station open. At the moment we need to raise an extra £1000 to replace a vital PC. Your generosity, through your donati...
Posts
One of the best-kept secrets…. S ir Robin Knox-Johnston once called NCI “one of the best-kept secrets in Search and Rescue”, meaning that while we do what we hope is a good job, very few people have heard about us. The main reason is that our work involves communication with HM Coastguard (and to a lesser extent locally, the Portsmouth Harbour Master), but very seldom with other people. Often, a casualty will call the Coastguard, and be helped by the rescue vessels, without ever knowing that NCI was involved. For example:- Consider an evening in early July this year. Two watchkeepers came on duty to cover the 4pm to 7.30pm watch. Given that NCI is a maritime safety organisation, watchkeepers can perhaps be forgiven for anticipating and looking for potential problems. However, scanning the area with their binoculars revealed nothing of concern happening up-harbour, and although there were a few people fishing off the rocks near the harbour entrance none of them seemed in danger of...
Distress Signals How do you call for help when you have an emergency situation, are in "grave and imminent“ danger and need immediate assistance? Conversely, and equally important, if someone else needs assistance, would you recognise the distress signals that they are making? The international SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea) regulations list several ways in which distress can be signalled by day and/or by night. For simplicity, let’s put them into groups… It’s possible that only very large vessels will use these signals:- Signal flags ‘N’ and ‘C’ hoisted on a signal mast. A black square shape hoisted over a black round shape (or vice-versa) on a signal mast. Noise (eg gunfire) at regular intervals. Continuous sounding of fog horn. SOS by morse on radio. SOS by morse on signal lamp. A burning bucket of tar or oil on the rear deck. [Maybe a bit archaic, but then again, it’s still an official signal, and flame or smoke coming from any vessel for any reason is bad news]. Perhap...
‘Time and Tide’ Part 2 In case the illustration gives readers the impression that NCI concerns itself only with the safety of yachtsmen, this is perhaps a good time to make it clear that NCI keeps a watch over all waterborne craft and also anyone who near the shore – eg on cliffs, beaches, sea walls etc. Everyone “In, on or near the water” is not exactly an official motto, but it does describe the area and people we keep watch over. The subject of this blog post … as you might guess from the picture … is ‘Grounding’; this is something that can happen to any vessel, be it yacht, powerboat, or rowing skiff. Watchkeepers at NCI Gosport logged a total of three groundings in our watch area during the year 2021, but for some reason the problem seems to be growing - there have been at least four groundings logged so far in the first six months of 2022, and the number keeps growing. Some grounding incidents are pretty minor and present no real problems in getting fr...
Time and Tide Part 1 This article in the ‘View from the Harbour Entrance’ blog looks at some of the problems caused by tides. Given how incredibly accurate tide predictions can be, and how easy it is to get hold of those predicted tide times and heights, you might think that watercraft users would never suffer tide-related problems. Unfortunately, in practice, you would sometimes be wrong. That’s not to say that everyone hits problems caused by tides – far from it. But there is one particular event that you can almost guarantee we will observe at almost every spring tide. Before we launch into that, let’s review where you can get tide information. Well, there are plenty of almanacs and harbour guides available containing tide information (note that times are invariably given in GMT, so you have to adjust by one hour in the summer). You can also get a tide app for your smartphone. Next, the QHM (Queens Harbour Masters) website gives tide information for that day; a good place to go is h...
The view of the Gosport Station from the Round Tower I was on my PC today and came across a number of videos on YouTube that describe National Coastwatch and its operation pretty well. If you have an idle few minutes, and want to learn more about NCI, you may like to watch these... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfjX554jnaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SqCOcLAfpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPtJ0aeclJg NCI Poulran BBC Spotlight - December 1st 2010 CoastWatch.mp4 - YouTube Do please bear in mind that some of the vidos are ten years old or more, and some of the statistics and numbers of stations are out of date. Just to set the record straight, as of end 2021... There were about 56 operational NCI stations Which participated in about 700 incidents.... half of which were initiated by NCI. By the way - if only a few posts are visible in this blog, click on the ‘Older Posts’ link towards the bottom of the page to see more....
'Round The Island' Race I've taken the liberty of copying a post from our Facebook page about the recent 'Round The Island' race... "Yesterday the annual Round the Island race took place in force 4-6 winds. Many competitors departed and returned to Portsmouth and NCI Gosport was operational from 06.00 until sunset. We had a busy day with many radio check requests on Channel 65 and followed numerous Mayday and PanPan calls. We relayed a PanPan to Solent Coasyguard from a vessel aground on Bembridge ledge taking on water and with engine failure and had ‘eyes on’ a yacht grounded on Ryde Sands. In addition HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier entered the harbour and the Japanese guided missile destroyer Shimakaze and HMS Dauntless departed." Now that was a busy day !