reginaldon
Well-Known Member
You scarcely get that for murder these days!
Lost yachtsman rescued TWICE after using a ROAD ATLAS to navigate.
- Thread starter lenseman
- Start date
You scarcely get that for murder these days!
electrosys
Well-Known Member
Well, I think that's the stupidiest comment yet on this thread.
1 - he didn't call them out - someone else did.
2 - if he had got stuck on a sandbank with a GPS, full complement of paper charts, latest wizzo chart-plotter and a certificate in celestial navigation ... the lifeboat would still have been standing by.
Anyone can get stuck on the putty - I've done it a couple of times, along with a million other people. Luckily no-one drew anyone's attention to my error - which enabled me to brew-up and give the impression that my situation had been planned all along ...
jimi
Well-Known Member
FistralG
Well-Known Member
Do you think he had enough fuel to reach Holland
At least someone is on the ball on here!
Retired in Crete
Well-Known Member
toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
RNLI
New Member
Our volunteers will help anyone in trouble at sea, no matter who they are or how they got into that situation and we endeavour to remain impartial and non-judgemental. We also have a responsibility to provide advice on sea safety and encourage anyone going afloat to follow some simple advice: get some training, wear a lifejacket, maintain your engine and carry spares, check the weather forecast, tell someone where you are going and know how to navigate safely.
Interestingly, the Wells Coxswain had previously advised Mr Brown that it would be wise not to put to sea - advice that Mr Brown chose not to take and was subsequently rescued. While we are glad that Mr Brown is safe and able to continue sailing, in this context our Coxswain's comments that Mr Brown was perhaps "foolhardy" are understandable.
Regarding the cost of launching a lifeboat, this figure is derived from the annual cost of running our lifeboat service in the UK and Republic of Ireland - including maintaining the lifeboat and station, crew training and fuel costs. This figure is then divided by the total number of launches. We recognise that this is a rough estimate and, despite pressure from the press, have tried to steer away from using this figure in recent years, preferring instead to give the average cost (excluding capital costs) of running an all-weather or inshore lifeboat station (£215,000 and £90,000 per year respectively).
George Rawlinson
RNLI Operations
Interestingly, the Wells Coxswain had previously advised Mr Brown that it would be wise not to put to sea - advice that Mr Brown chose not to take and was subsequently rescued. While we are glad that Mr Brown is safe and able to continue sailing, in this context our Coxswain's comments that Mr Brown was perhaps "foolhardy" are understandable.
Regarding the cost of launching a lifeboat, this figure is derived from the annual cost of running our lifeboat service in the UK and Republic of Ireland - including maintaining the lifeboat and station, crew training and fuel costs. This figure is then divided by the total number of launches. We recognise that this is a rough estimate and, despite pressure from the press, have tried to steer away from using this figure in recent years, preferring instead to give the average cost (excluding capital costs) of running an all-weather or inshore lifeboat station (£215,000 and £90,000 per year respectively).
George Rawlinson
RNLI Operations
Me_has_a_Boat
N/A
Personally I have no problem with the Mr Browns of this world being numpties - whether rescued by the RNLI or others.......or not at all 
.
For me I see the freedom to f#ck up (and even to die from it) as simply the price of me also being free (from both Govt and dogooders) - I do appreciate that others see things differently, but I see that as a cross to be borne rather than an aspiration
.
.For me I see the freedom to f#ck up (and even to die from it) as simply the price of me also being free (from both Govt and dogooders) - I do appreciate that others see things differently, but I see that as a cross to be borne rather than an aspiration
.
FistralG
Well-Known Member
Good post.
toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
Clip on?
I don't know if this chap asked to be rescued (it seems not) but if you're going to work out the numbers that way he actually reduced the cost of every other rescue that year from that station! What a hero!
Well worth a listen:
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/podcasts/510475/libby-purves-podcast-don-t-be-a-nag-rnli
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sailor211
Well-Known Member
Is this guy better or worse than the call I heard Sunday, from a boat with engine problems, who was short handed. Called for assistance, Questioning from coastguard revilled that it was a 37 foot sailing boat with three crew and it was a f5-6 and too windy to sail!!!
toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
Yup. It was ok for the likes of RKJ, Francis Chichester and Alec Rose to ask where they were every time they came across a ship & we've all been on the putty. (...and in this case it sounds like he planned it.)
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Beadle
Well-Known Member
Mr Rawlinson
No-one is going to argue with your sound advice. Nor would I accept that what this gentleman did was other than unwise.
I would make the point that making public statements critical of those that you assist is equally unwise for a number of reasons
Firstly if your people had confined themselves to a quiet word of good advice it would probably have been followed. Denouncing the man to the press would almost certainly have the opposite effect.
Further and perhaps more seriously, what is someone going to do if he is sailing on a shoestring, as many do, and finds himself in trouble. Will he call for help and risk public ridicule and abuse or will he press on and hope for the best? - if it kills him.
I am all in favour of your people sharing their knowledge professionalism and experience with we amateurs, but please have them do it with the professionalism they bring to the operational part of their work.
toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
Good point. It's already acknowledged that charging for rescues might put people off asking for assistance. I'd have thought dobbing people in to the Daily Mail might do the same.
I dislike the RNLI intensely, they are just a semi official branch of the intrusive Nanny State hyped up on the drug corporate charity expansion.
But on this occasion the guy had been rescued once and then headed out to sea again contrary to the advice of the local Wells Coxswain. he deserved a public dressing down. Then however pro PR at RNLI HQ got control of events and shot the RNLI in the foot by quoting vacuous callout costs that are now open to ridicule here.
The Achilles heel of the RNLI is the Poole HQ. Last month I nosied around the Whitby Lifeboat Station, it was order & perfection personified, every mans dream of how to run a top class boathouse and workshop. Excellent frontline members are undermined by the greedy executive blunderers at HQ and their clumsy public messages.
Excellent observation
So today's public safety message is "Help reduce lifeboat callout costs, go to sea, be an idiot and get rescued".
toad_oftoadhall
Well-Known Member
Can't say I agree. His life, his choices. People were told not to try to climb the Eiger. They did anyway. Many of them died. Who are we to say they were wrong to ignore the good advice not to climb the Eiger.
+1 (With the exception of the RNLI Beach Nazis.)
Beadle
Well-Known Member
Most certainly he was unwise, perhaps foolish to go to sea a second time. Certainly the coxswain was quite entitled to take him on one side and tell him his fortune. I do not believe it is the role, right, or responsibility of anyone from the RNLI to publicly humiliate someone, not even if they have done something foolish.
I agree that HQs intervention served only to make things worse. I can only assume that it was an attempt to generate some additional publicity and hence revenue.
I do agree about Whitby station, and of course its not unique in that respect. If they put that sort of picture to generate publicity they would do a lot better.
I suspect the thinking that came from above was to try to turn it
skodster
Well-Known Member
Before you start calling people stupid, let me provide a canned summary and remind you how the thread started off.
The OP reported on a man who went to sea with a road atlas and not a clue which way was up (having to ask directions at a North Sea wind farm kind of suggest this). With me so far?
There then ensued a discussion relating to the costs to the RNLI of being called out on emergencies. I then commented that it wasn't so much the cost that was an issue but the strain on limited RNLI resources and the potential for a tragedy through someone's casual and lazy approach to boatsmanship.
If you have fully prepared yourself and your boat and then you get into difficulties, then that's a wholly different ball game. To go to sea with no more than a road atlas is inexcusable.
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There are two issue being mixed up here. The right of the RNLI to be critical of someone who has been stupid twice in quick succession and then the right of Britons to put to sea in pursuit of crazy endevours. We need the later, they have been a perennial aspect of British life for 40 years. Such ventures would also provide beneficial free copy for the RNLI if their PR department was not staffed by incompetents.
Oh yes I forgot about them, a worrying symptom of the ugly corporate expansion underway in the RNLI. The long term interests of the RNLI would be better served if the Beach Nazi Panzer Grenadier Brigade was completely hived off as "Shoreside Safety Enforcers Limited" and stripped of any RNLI branding.