Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-161)
MR JON
GIFFORD AND
MR MARK
DANSON-HATCHER
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Q140 Mr Stringer: How do you do that?
Mr Gifford: Basically, if you
want to join the National Coastwatch and become a watchkeeper,
you join the charity and it costs you nothing; you come in free.
You do approximately 12 hours classroom training in a village
hall or a facility that we can use. That would include what we
call the basics: chart work, tides, weather, all the things you
should see when you are looking out to sea and local knowledge.
Having done that, as a trainee you would start a series of supernumerary
watches. There are normally two trained watchkeepers on watch,
but when we have supernumerary trainees they can come in.
Q141 Mr Stringer: I hope you do not think
this is a silly question, it is not meant to be: when they are
watching do they look through binoculars? What do they actually
do?
Mr Gifford: We have binoculars,
in most stations we have very powerful telescopes, times 60 magnification
telescopes. The basic thing is that you look around and you scan
with a decent set of binoculars. Our binoculars normally have
an inbuilt compass so that if we did spot something we would have
an instant bearing on it and then it is up to us to measure the
distance, or calculate or even guess the distance, and report
it if it is something important. The equipment is quite simple.
There is a little skill in using a very powerful telescope; you
must not touch it with your body otherwise your heartbeats start
to make it blur a bit. Generally speaking the scanning is done
with binoculars and we are constantly looking. People are taught
not just to look out of the window but to notice what is going
on. We have areas in each watch station where they know there
are vulnerable areas and there may be a tidal stream or a tidal
flow, a race or something which is known to be a hazard. We would
scan that all the time. Normally, when we are really very busy,
remember we are logging everything which comes past, we log it
by date, time, type of yacht, vessel, direction it is sailing,
any other details which may be relevant, so that if at some stage
a vessel were lost the coastguard could come to us and ask whether
yacht X came past us at all.
Q142 Mr Stringer: Do your volunteers
help to educate users of the coastal seas and the coast in the
dangers they may be facing?
Mr Gifford: We do not lecture
to them, but we would be glad to advise and we get a lot of inshore
sailors who phone us up and ask us about the weather, particularly
diving teams. They would ask for a weather report on an area and
if we know where they are going to dive, they will be a focus
of attention. We will see how many go down, how many come up and
we have had accidents diving.
Q143 Mr Stringer: Is there any potential
for that? Do you think people who are using the coasts and coastal
waters know enough about it?
Mr Gifford: That is a very good
question. You can go to a boat builder and buy a boat with 1,000
horsepower engine underneath it and not even know how to tie the
thing up to the quay. There is no law to stop you doing it. We
see some frightening sights. You see an open inflatable boat going
over quite a choppy sea with six kids in the back and the only
person with a life jacket on will be the man driving it. This
sort of thing we have no jurisdiction over, but we see it: windsurfers;
jetskis.
Q144 Mr Stringer: Would you report that?
If you saw somebody doing something you did not think was sensible,
would you report it or would you just note it?
Mr Gifford: We would note it,
because frankly if it is busy and we report it to the coastguard,
they would ask what else we had to tell them. They have no jurisdiction
either. We have a very tricky thing with the traffic separation
scheme round Land's End. Our stations at Cape Cornwall and Gwennap
Head around Land's End track every vessel which does this. It
is just like driving up the motorway the wrong way. A lot of them,
to save time and trouble, take shortcuts and it is dangerous and
we report that. We do report any breach we see, but in fairness
to the coastguard there is not that much they can do about it
because they have apparently no legal power to enforce.
Q145 Chairman: I am not going to argue
with you, but they do in fact have the right to go back to those
vessels. They are not short of means of communication.
Mr Gifford: Oh, no.
Q146 Chairman: I should have thought
even the present coastguard officers could have explained in simple
Anglo-Saxon terms frequently used by their predecessors that it
was not a good idea.
Mr Gifford: Certainly they can
remind them, but they cannot take any legal action, as I understand
it. I am not a lawyer, so I do not know.
Q147 Miss McIntosh: I have noticed in
countries like Denmark, which is as big a maritime country as
we are, that they are very, very clear, in television broadcasts
as well as radio broadcasts, on the state of the sea, the wind
and weather forecast. Do you think we do enough in this country
to inform people of that before they commence a journey?
Mr Gifford: The small boat sailor,
the yachtsman has to take care of himself to a large degree. He
should have taken all the steps to ensure that the weather situation,
as far as possible, was clear to him before he set out in the
same way as the RNLI would tell you they should ensure their boats
are fit to go out. We give weather reports to anybody who asks;
we would give them a weather report. The coastguards do regular
weather forecasts and we give weather reports round certain counties,
in Devon and Cornwall, over the radio.
Q148 Mrs Ellman: Are there any changes
you would like to see in the way search and rescue operates?
Mr Gifford: Generally speaking
I do not think we have any particular comment or complaint to
make about our contacts and, if we report an incident, the way
it is handled by the coastguard. I am not in a position to say
that we should have more lifeboats or more aeroplanes or whatever.
We have had helicopters come to pick cows off cliffs which we
have reported. It is a good exercise for the Royal Navy.
Q149 Mrs Ellman: Would you say your work
is valued by the other agencies and by government?
Mr Gifford: Yes. I could take
you to coastguard stations where the operations manager would
say he does not know quite what he would do without our presence.
The lifeboats are all for us. They are constantly complaining
that we cannot talk to them direct, but that is a technical matter.
Generally speaking some of our stations, without naming names,
work more closely with the customs and police than they do with
the coastguard. That is for another reason. Generally speaking
we are well thought of and people know us for what we are. We
are trained volunteers and that is all.
Q150 Chairman: The Dart has been a very
busy river for about 500 or 600 years. What has suddenly made
Kingsweir of interest to you?
Mr Gifford: The fact that the
National Trust, having developed a site at the eastern mouth of
the River Dart as an SSSI, have, after a lot of persuading, allowed
us to occupy an old gunnery observation post.
Q151 Chairman: That brings me very neatly
to my next question. Is it true the Marine Agency are not too
happy for you to use their redundant buildings?
Mr Gifford: We have asked for
several and we have been refused.
Q152 Chairman: Could you give us a list
of those?
Mr Gifford: I could tell you two
straight off the top of my head now, one at Berry Head overlooking
Torbay and another one at Hengistbury Head overlooking Poole Bay.
Q153 Chairman: What reasons were given?
Mr Gifford: Radio equipment within
the station.
Q154 Chairman: The suggestion being that
you were going to have one or two wild parties and wreck the equipment?
I am beginning to see why the admirals join.
Mr Gifford: I have never understood
this. I dispute it to this day and I will do. I do not think their
radios breathe CS gas, I do not think they are unsafe for their
own people, so why they should be unsafe for our people I am not
quite sure. We are in the middle of a debate on this subject.
Q155 Chairman: Is it really a debate
or is it a dialogue of the deaf? If you are shouting at the Marine
Agency and they are not listening, you are not getting very far.
How long ago did you get a refusal on these two? In the last two
years, the last four years? How long ago?
Mr Gifford: On 7 March last year
we were given the go-ahead.
Q156 Chairman: For which one?
Mr Gifford: For Berry Head. I
think it was in July that we were told that it was a radio station
and we could not go in there. We have had a lot of correspondence
over Hengistbury Head. Some of the local members of parliament
have been lobbying for it as well. We do not go there to expand
ourselves: it is the yacht clubs and the users of the sea which
come to us and suggest we go in there and get on with it. Quite
a lot of that is said. We would very much like to do it. There
are probably more, but most of the stations we are taking over
now are from private estates, National Trust, organisations of
that sort. I have to say that the buildings do sometimes accommodate
radio when we move in. There is no problem about that, because
quite a lot of our watch stations are now participating in the
police 02 airwave scheme around the coast and we have radios installed.
Q157 Chairman: Is there a particular
reason therefore why you cannot talk directly to the RNLI?
Mr Gifford: We can talk to them,
but talking on the radio means using channel zero and only in
an absolute emergency would we be using channel zero. We have
an agreement with the coastguard that that is an emergency operation
only. We have to be trained and qualified in order to use it.
Q158 Chairman: Do you get the sense that
perhaps the Marine Agency is not taking the leisure sailor very
seriously and therefore they are quite happy that you should stand
in for them?
Mr Gifford: I hope they are grateful
for our assistance. We are not a rival organisation.
Q159 Chairman: They might be grateful,
but they are not overly grateful, are they, if they think you
are not suitable to use their buildings for what seems to me to
be a fairly innocent pursuit or a rather important service?
Mr Gifford: Yes. That is a good
point. The other point is that where we work on the ground day
to day with the coastguard people—
Q160 Chairman: No, you have explained
to us and I am not asking you to make pejorative remarks. You
have made it clear that you have a good relationship, but it is
on a one-to-one basis and it is locally because most coastguard
stations are very happy to have extra pairs of eyes and the men
and women at the front end know that you are doing a useful job.
Over and above that what is the problem? Is it that the MCA does
not regard leisure sailors as of sufficient importance and therefore
does not think the provision of extra eyes is an essential service?
Mr Gifford: That is a question
which one would have to ask them, but my view is that they are
extremely busy with leisure sailors in the summer. Some of the
coastguard stations, for instance the Solent, are at times almost
overwhelmed.
Q161 Chairman: Then would it not seem
quite sensible really to talk you fair and to encourage you to
do more work rather than less?
Mr Gifford: I would welcome it.
Chairman: That is quite helpful. Are
there any other questions? Thank you both for coming, it has been
very helpful. I am sorry, Mr Danson-Hatcher if I have not been
asking you awkward questions, but doubtless the minute you have
gone I shall think of all sorts of interesting things. Thank you
very much for coming.
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