Marine Rescue search and rescue exercise preview May, 2024

Inspector Stuart Massey and Jervis Bay volunteer Stefania Nitto talk about this weekend's Marine Rescue search and rescue exercise.

Transcript

00:00 We do search and rescue exercises so that the volunteers that we have can hone

00:05 their skills that in the event of a real emergency they're prepped and they're

00:09 ready to go. You do need to be rescue ready. Our mission is to save lives on

00:13 the water and if we can get our skills up to date and we can hone those so that

00:17 we can do the best that we can possibly do when people are in trouble, well

00:21 that's what we want to do. Anybody that would like to come down and have a look

00:24 at our fleet, it's a very rare opportunity that we can get the majority

00:27 of our fleet from the Illawarra together. We'll be departing Shell Harbour

00:31 Marina between 9 and 9.30 in the morning and we will have boats going from a 4 metre

00:37 jet ski up to a 13.7 metre flybridge cruiser. So there'll be a vast array of

00:43 vessels on there, great viewing from either the north or the south break wall

00:47 down here at Shell Harbour. We hold a desktop exercise to simulate an

00:51 emergency for our radio operators so that they get experience under a bit of

00:57 simulated pressure for navigation, communication. Communication is the key

01:01 to any search and rescue exercise. If we can get good comms going then the whole

01:06 process runs a lot smoother. Looking forward to upskill our training in the

01:12 radio room to be able to provide the best quality care and assistance to

01:18 everybody out on the water. A lot of pressure being a watch officer isn't

01:22 it? Yeah there is, but being able to upskill and having all those skills that

01:27 we need makes it a lot easier. It'll be interesting to see all of the training

01:31 matching up and seeing how everything works cohesively as a Illawarra team zone.

01:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]