Safety Boat Driver and Crew Guidance and Information

This page is being built over 2024.

Safety Boat Notes

• Bad Weather is a more challenging environment for Safety Boat skills and physical fitness - if you are not confident in the face of the weather conditions at the Club then alert the Race Officer.
• The Safety Boat can be cold and wet - Dress appropriately for your duty.
• The Safety Boat may need to respond very quickly to an emergency:
  • Keep the boats in sight at all times.
  • Don't stray from the Safety Boat.
  • People before boats: if in doubt, leave the dinghy and attend another person in trouble elsewhere on the lake.
  • Maintain your spatial awareness when recovering a person or boat: someone else may be in trouble elsewhere.
  • Moor-up to save petrol if conditions permit.

When moving marker buoys, please pull the rope and weight right up to the RIB hull. This is because:

• Dragging the weight drags up weed from the bottom of the lake which impedes racing.
• Dragging the weight can cut or tangle anglers lines, which means any fish on a hook when the body rope cuts the line are left with the hook and line attached, leading to a slow death.

Please move buoys to the middle of the lake, or back to their normal position at the end of racing

Safety Boat Skills & Drills

Here are some relevant videos on Safety Boat Skills

1. Swanage Sailing Club Safety Training Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuMJ2ExA79k
2. RYA Video for single-person safety boats which has some relevance to South Cerney's two-person Safety Boats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xny40ijRMnI
3. Coming alongside, common method. https://jonmendez.co.uk/2022/11/03/how-to-dock-a-boat-coming-alongside-in-a-single-engined-rib/

Last updated 15:31 on 22 June 2024