International Moth

Hayling Rescue

Frank Dunster, aka Hayling Rescue, always has a yearly review of activities and collation of statistics and this goes back to Frank’s first years of rescue in the early 1970s. Then there was a mere 30 to 40 rescue incidents a year.

Photo: Peter Hickson

Hayling Rescue had an annual peak of incidents with some 220 around 2012 and this ties in nicely with recently released statistics for the Chichester Harbour Conservancy which reveals that since 2012 the Harbour Patrol had dealt with a yearly average of 220 incidents.

If you add to this the 100 or 120 lifesaving incidents the Hayling RNLI Lifeboats are called to each year then the 3 services usually attend 500 incidents per year in and around Chichester Harbour and its approaches. Frank also discovered that the type of incidents Hayling Rescue attends are very similar to that of the Harbour Patrol. In 2018 Frank towed to safety 41 vessels with engine failure and the Harbour Patrol deals with just over 30 such incidents per year.

Hayling Rescue did not need to attend the Commodore aground in his RS Elite in 2018 – but instead pulled the Vice Commodore off the Stockers Sands whilst racing. A total of 17 yachts were re-floated by Hayling Rescue due to running aground and the Harbour Patrol appears to be attending up to 30 groundings each year.

Frank assisted or rescued nearly 30 dinghies during the year which far outstrips that of the Harbour Patrol Dinghy racing, training support and rescue continue to be the main activity of Hayling Rescue.

The RNLI Hayling Lifeboat Station had its usual year of lifesaving with some 78 incidents. Many of these involve swimmers, canoeists and windsurfers off the busy beaches of East Head, The Witterings and Hayling South beach as well as towing into the Harbour several large yachts with machinery failures a major contribution of lifesaving to the community.

In recent years Hayling Rescue has been kept operating by the skill of the financial Friends of Hayling Rescue led by Chris Driscoll and the generosity of HISC members in conjunction with the Hayling Island Sail Training Trust together with other Harbour Users and Authorities.

It is therefore due to this continuing support and the obvious contributions of Hayling Rescue to the safety of HISC members and Harbour Users in general that Frank fully intends to keep operating for 2019 and several more years to come – hopefully.

In recent years Hayling Rescue has been kept operating by the skill of the financial Friends of Hayling Rescue led by Chris Driscoll and the generosity of HISC members in conjunction with the Hayling Island Sail Training Trust

Search and rescue charity Serve On at HISC

HISC and non-profit humanitarian response charity Serve On signed an agreement to work in partnership back in 2015. Over the last few years this has been ticking over in the background and some of you may well have seen people in red dry-suits around the club.

So who are Serve On and what do they do? They are a registered charity providing rescue and humanitarian services both within the UK and globally. The International Response Team (IRT) are highly trained search and rescue volunteers who are ready 24 hours a day to drop everything and head anywhere in the world to offer their expertise and lifesaving skills. Their combined experience covers 20 years of disasters and 22 international deployments, including Pakistan in 2005, Haiti in 2010, Nepal in 2015 and the Caribbean in 2017.

Back at home, Serve On is developing a network of formally trained volunteer Community Resilience Teams(CRT) to support the emergency services and local authorities in their response to major incidents. Serve On volunteers were on hand to help after flooding in Tadcaster and Keswick in December 2015, Coverack in Cornwall in 2017 and were praised for their life saving efforts during the snow chaos brought by Storm Emma in 2018. Over three days and nights the volunteers worked relentlessly clearing roads, freeing trapped motorists and ferrying district and community nurses to remote patients in need of vital medication.

Serve On membership is not exclusive to those with two legs. Their highly trained four-legged members (the Dog Team) are an invaluable addition to the volunteers’ high tech equipment when emergencies occur.

Rescue Rookies, the younger members (14-18), are an integral part of the Serve On family. Training alongside the adult members of the CRT, they learn valuable lessons on the benefits of volunteering, boosting their confidence and their CVs, and have travelled abroad to help deliver the risk reduction training Serve On volunteers give in disaster-prone countries.

Everything Serve On does is underpinned by its values and ethos, the desire to serve for the greater good and in the knowledge that, by doing so, we make ourselves better. This is a powerful message and big companies and major sporting groups have been keen for this can-do spirit to rub off during exercises and courses. England Women’s Rugby Squad went through a team-building weekend as part of their 2017 World Cup training camp & England’s Under 20s 6 Nations Squad have recently done a disaster experience to develop self-awareness, communication and leadership skills.

Serve On & HISC Serve On runs training activities at HISC in order to raise funds for its ongoing work and to train its own volunteers. Some of these commercial activities are centred around water rescue and associated powerboat skills and are aimed at emergency services and other voluntary organisations who provide flood response. Any monies raised from these activities are used to fund the work of the charity enabling overseas and UK projects. HISC benefits from catering and accommodation income generated by these courses, which are run primarily during the week, when the club is otherwise quiet. HISC also benefits on the water from its association and support for Serve On, whose volunteers have supported the annual “Round Hayling Island Challenge” for the last 4 years by providing additional rescue cover to complement HISC’s own safety boats. In 2019 Serve On will once again be on the water supporting not only the Round Hayling Island Challenge in September but also the Whitsun Regatta in May.

Interested in joining Serve On? Contact info@serveon.org.uk Membership is open to all. What unites Serve On volunteers is a desire to save and to transform lives, to lead and to serve, to develop themselves while making a difference to others.