Launch Stories

29th June 2008 - Donald McLauchlan performs a search outside Dover harbour

Helmsman Matt Pavitt, crew members Emma Pavitt, Dave Mitchell and Martin Stokes where on exercise on Donald McLauchlan 3 miles due east of St Margaret’s bay.  The local knowledge component of the exercise was for crewmembers to navigate Donald McLauchlan safely to Fan Bay.  Fan Bay is an area of coastline between St Margaret’s and Langdon Cliffs. 

The regular “ops normal” radio communication with Dover Coastguard meant that the Coastguard where aware of the lifeboats location and informed the crew that they might have a job for them in the vicinity of Dover Harbour’s eastern approach, more details where to follow.  Matt told Emma (who was helming at that time) to continue on towards Fan Bay, which was on route to Dover in any case. A few minutes later the Coastguard passed on details of the work, including a latitude and longitude for the start position and requested an expanding box search.    Earlier, a boat belonging to Dover Port authority had retrieved a dinghy adrift outside the harbour.  Inspection of the dinghy led to the belief that it was probably attached to a larger vessel and the likely scenario was that it had broken away at some point during passage and had not been noticed missing, or had not been reported missing. 

The Coastguard, using what information they had, projected a search area for Donald McLauchlan in case the dinghy was adrift for more unfortunate reasons.  The brief was to look for wreckage or debris.  The lat/long for the start point was entered into the global positioning system plotter and it became evident to the crew that the search area was right across the middle of the ferry approach into the eastern entrance of Dover Harbour.  Dover Coastguard notified Dover Port Control of the imminent search activities via landline telephone.   

An amusing moment happened whilst Matt was working through the maths of the search and allocated jobs to the crew.  Emma would helm whilst Matt called out the change in direction the search demanded based on timed legs, Dave was to keep a look out to port on each leg and Martin’s only job was to ”keep an eye on that ferry”.  The Pride of Calais had left its berth in the harbour and was heading out through the entrance and was going to track parallel to the first easterly leg of the search and was already gaining on the lifeboat.  The next complication was that the next leg was due south, across the course of the ferry.  Matt estimated that Donald McLauchlan would pass safely in front on this leg.  The ferry crew might not anticipate such a move in close proximity to their course though.  A quick conversation with the Pride of Calais over VHF radio prevented any confusion.   

Donald McLauchlan completed the search with no evidence of debris in the water found, the Coastguard were watching from their facility above Langdon Cliffs and agreed that the search of the area had been thoroughly conducted and released Donald McLauchlan to continue exercising.  The experience gained by the crew in searching this busy waterway was a considerable bonus and unlikely to be repeatable in exercise conditions in the future.

Article by Dave Mitchell