A Quiet Time Of Year
You would be right in assuming that the activity of NCI Gosport slows down somewhat at this time of year. The short days and poor weather of January and February drastically reduce the amount of leisure traffic in the harbour and the Solent. But you would be wrong to think that we close down or become completely dormant during these months.
To begin with, the NCI Gosport lookout station was fully crewed during this time; a total of 59 days, operating a daylight watch with two watchkeepers on duty amounts to 826 person-hours of work. [About one third of our watchkeepers are female.]
During that time our training team were involved with the training of seven new volunteers, and that included running three or four evening sessions for them as well as the ‘on the job’ training.
Training doesn’t stop with new volunteers though, as every watchkeeper stands a watch with a trainer to do a ‘refresher’, ensuring that skills and knowledge are still up to scratch. The trainers do this for each other as well.
Outside of training and refreshers, watchkeepers still did their normal tasks in January and February, observing and logging…
… 366 licensed fishing vessel movements (such vessels are regarded as particularly vulnerable).
… 64 other vulnerable vessels such as foreign yachts, kayaks and jet skis that caught the watchkeepers eyes for some reason or other.
… 44 military vessels and 60 lifeboat and Border Force movements (which we just like to keep a note of, even though they are not regarded as vulnerable).
… made 161 status, weather and closedown broadcasts on VHF channel 65
… responded to 95 radio check calls on VHF channel 65
… recorded 236 sets of weather observations
It’s good to know that there were no significant incidents recorded during these months- it means that in our watch area no-one got into trouble. We did report a SART activation to HM Coastguard though (it turned out to be accidental), and told the Portsmouth Community Wardens about a lifebuoy that was washed up on Southsea beach (presumably having been parted from it’s stand in the area of Clarence Pier).
Let’s not bother to mention the two meetings of the management committee, two meetings of the training group, two general training evenings that everyone who can attends, or the visits to the station from local Councillors, donors, or other NCI stations.
Yes, it certainly was a quiet time of year.
