For Marine Rescue the summer holiday period means a greater chance of calls for help and so the local unit are currently preparing for their busiest season yet.
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After a horror 2017 with a number of drownings in Port Macquarie, the unit have really tried to promote an educational campaign around greater water safety, unit commander, Greg Davies said.
“The holidays are always a busy time for us and last year was pretty busy with a number of high profile searches in December, along with lots of calls for help from broken down vessels. Because of that we have tried to educate the boating community,” Mr Davies said.
“Over the year we have seen an increase in the local community logging on with us when they head out on the water which is fantastic.”
He said as a unit they have really focused on boosting their response capabilities.
“Heading into summer this year we have nearly doubled our boat crew and radio base volunteers which is an incredible achievement,” he said,
“We have also had lots of members get more qualifications which is great including our first female skipper. It has been hundreds of hours of work to do,” he said.
“We have members qualify as radio operators and watch officers taking our total volunteers to over 60 in the radio base and lots of members qualify as leading crew and a few as skipper taking out total qualified in the boat shed to 40.
“To have this many people is a challenge but it also adds a level of flexibility that we didn’t have before. This is helped by the addition of an extra jetski now in operation.
“As a result, this summer we will be out on the water as much as we can so that if we do get calls for help we can be there quicker as we are already on the water.”
Mr Davies said despite the year being busy with lots of members joining actual call outs had been down on the year before.
“This year we have had more than 55 call outs ranging from boat fires and sinkings to breakdowns due to poor maintenance but that is actually less than usual.
“We know more and more boats are going out so we are hoping our education messages are getting through to people.”
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