A Wild Day on the River Dart
With the many storms of the past couple of weeks and therefore less maritime traffic, you'd expect the Dartmouth inshore lifeboat to be pretty redundant. Far from it. The local crew have been kept busy in the river itself. The attached video footage from a 'shout' on December 23rd shows how wild the river itself can get and how important a role the RNLI still has to play.
As the Dart Lifeboat website explains:
"In extreme weather our volunteer lifeboatmen are principally concerned with saving lives rather than property. However when moored vessels break free there is the real possibility of boatmen taking undue risks to save their vessels or of the vessel injuring others who live aboard their boats moored in the harbour.
The Coastguard initially tasked the lifeboat crew to a 45 ft Moody which was breaking free of her moorings in the high winds, having snapped the bow chain to her mooring buoy. With the asistance of the Dart Harbour Patrol the yacht was secured. The ILB was then tasked to inspect and secure a further five yachts which were breaking free of their moorings on the Visitors Pontoons. The final vessel in trouble was the 70 ft water bowser, Bay Oasis, which was attached to the Fairmile above Noss. The upriver bowline had parted and she was swinging into the main channel, dragging the large passenger boat with her. Working again with the Dart Harbour Patrol she was secured, with some difficulty in the high winds, to her mooring.
Lifeboat crew. Chris Tracey, helmsman. Kevin Murphy, Buster Hart & Richard Eggleton crew
Launch crew, Dai Richards, tractor driver. Simon Amphlett crew."
