Yeeeeeehar!
No I haven't got an agent/contract/three book deal. Much more fun than that. 9.15 every Sunday I turn into a lifeboatman (in my mind a superhero). A very unlikely one, stuffed into an oversize drysuit and swearing the air blue as I risk big ones struggling with my crewmates to heave our Runswick Bay Rescue Boat launch trailer across piles of seaweed and soft sand into the bloody freezing North Sea.
Ten minutes later we are blasting our RIB through six foot breaking waves off the headland, picking our way through the hull-smashing rocks and prop-shattering scars into the rock shelf at the foot of the cliffs where, year after year, idiot grockles (tourists) get themselves cut off by the rising tide.
And when they do, it's us that picks them off. The professional lifeboats up and down the coast are huge, with instruments that bleep and engines that could tow a whale off the beach. But they can't thread their boats into the shallows as we can and they don't have our local knowledge. In some places the cliffs are too sheer to even allow the rescue choppers to lower a high line.
These inshore rescue practices are fun, in a brutal kind of way: how much water do we have under the boat? Throw McGrath overboard. Whereupon he discovers his drysuit is leaking. Feet don't touch the seabed? Haul him back aboard and creep the boat in another 50 metres, slewing it bow on into the waves every few seconds. Depth? McGrath goes overboard again, hanging on to the boat. My feet touch bottom, except when the waves roar though and the boat and I are picked up. Myself and the other crew man (we have crew-women, too, but none came to practise this morning) hang off the bows to control the boat while we rescue our imaginary casualty then make a high speed run across the bay, flying off the crests of waves and slamming into the sea in clouds of spray.
Then Big Brother turns up. The RNLI, the pros from up the coast. Our boat is fast enough for fun and getting to a local rescue quickly but theirs is a beast. Twin 75 horsepower outboards, lots of toys and kit. We were invited aboard and I was given a chance to drive. "Don't be shy," the cox'n says, indicating the twin throttles, "give it beans."
I did. Taps wide open, the 22 foot rib planing over the sea at 35 mph in between the swells, leaping from the tops of the open sea swells and smacking into the sea, those engine howling behind me, the crew grinning like maniacs.
People around here have been doing this kind of thing for years. In the 1600s the entire village of Runswick fell into the sea. Everyone survived because they were at a funeral. The only house that did not end up in the sea? The dead man's house. Across the bay at Kettleness (whose ghostly black dog inspired Dracula) a similar event: a cliff-top landslip left several villagers and their wrecked houses marooned at the foot of the cliff. No problem for our Whitby mariners: a ship owner waited until high tide, sailed alongside the cliff fall, put a plank across and rescued the villagers.
Our fishermen had distinctive gansey jumpers so their drowned bodies could be recognized, our women would hitch up their skirts and launch the lifeboat which went out under oars in weather I would fear to tackle with the RNLI's 150 horses at my back.
Come the summer, some dilberts will try to walk along the beach from the neighbouring village, cock up their tides and get cut off or fall on the seaweed slick rocks and break a limb. Or someone will capsize a racing catamaran, go out in a fishing boat with a winter-neglected engine, get blown out to sea in a dinghy. And we'll go and get 'em.
The local cats and children are relieved. When local fishing boats were late home from sea the not-wishing-to-be-widowed fisherwives would go to the beach, build a fire and make the kids jump over it to bring their men home safe. And if that didn't produce results, they would sacrifice a cat. There are lots of cats hereabouts and the kids soon learn to jump really high.
Anyway. Nothing to do with being published, just a yeehar of a morning spent in the company of people who drag themselves out of bed and prepare for the day when someone is in real peril out there.
It's fun. And serious.
Litopia is the winner
Oy!
Skipper,
How did it come about that you are leading my life?
When I was twelve I announced that I wanted to join the Royal Navy - I even sent off for their information pack. Cue a concerted campaign by my ex-Quaker, pacifist, Socialist mother to head me off from such a career. In my teens I did manage a certain amount of sailing although I never progressed beyond the sort of crew that is handed a rope and told to pull and, after a short time told, 'For f**k's sake, stop pulling!'
I distinctly remember gliding into a crowded marina under sail with the engine out of action and the skipper, having pick his berth, letting go the mainsheets. The boom was swinging free in a very untidy manner so I held on to it, unnoticed by the skip until he realised it wasn't spilling the wind the way it was supposed to. We didn't actually kill anyone but there were some embarrassing paintwork issues.
Much later, when it was too late, I thought about joining the Coastguard. And when I found myself living in the States, where they have much less ageist policies regarding employment, I thought about it again. But the problem by that time was that I was in the mddle of the desert.
I still have this little dream within myself that I might one day move to somewhere on the coast and try and volunteer for the local lifeboat. In the meantime, I try to compensate for my non-nautical life with regular donations to the RNLI and Mercy Ships.
Excellent. I was taught
Excellent. I was taught navigation by a lifeboatman - guy called Cliff Murphy, as crusty and barnacled an old salt as ever there was. Of course I've forgotten most of what he taught me but I can still tie a bowline with my eyes closed.
Lifeboatmen are indeed heroes.
Skipper - this was really
Skipper - this was really useful as my new WIP has a lifeboatman in it. He's a paid one - most of you are volunteers, aren't you? But there're one or two paid employees of RNLI, I believe.
By the way,this is the most interesting and well-written blog I've read in weeks.
Sue