Each year's Annual Presentation of Awards provides an opportunity for an informal discussion on some of the medal services, the lifeboats involved and other aspects of lifeboat work. The day after the presentation of the medals in London this year Bronze medallists Alan Clarke of Hunstanton, Graham Raines of Hay ling Island and Nick Botham of Whitby spoke to the RNLI's Assistant Chief of Operations Commander Mike Woodroffe about work aboard the Institution's smaller lifeboats. They were joined by Rod James, a crew member on the Hayling Island Bronze medal service.Handling the lifeboats Mike Woodroffe: In all three of the medal services tn which you took part there were 12-15ft seas and both the Atlantic 21 and the D class were really operating at their upper limits. How did you find the boats handled in those sea conditions? Alan Clarke: When we were running free it was not too bad, when we reached the casualty and started to come across the wind in to her lee, she was very, very shy. You did not want speed, you wanted power to keep her head up. Once we got the casualty on board I remember the lads shouting 'here comes one' and the Atlantic started to rise. I remember the Atlantic starting to rise, looked up, and I had to look up again to see the top of the wave. The skipper of the Portunus said he could see completely underneath us! I was very concerned about the wind getting under the hull when she was clear of the water.

Normally you can gauge when your boat is going to fly and you are on the throttles to keep her head down as she crests. It's very difficult reading the sea at night, you don't see the holes, it's just black and white.

Did you feel you had enough power? Clarke: I wouldn't have wanted a lot more sea -1 think we would really have been struggling if we did. If we had gone up the Deeps that night instead of standing in to the shoal ground where the sea was shorter I think we would have been in real trouble.

Rod James: There seems to be two responses to a large wave. One I've used in the past is to put a lot of power on. On one particular wave, not on this service but a previous one, we hit a real white curler and became completely airborne. I've always felt confident that the boat is going to come down flat, or at least by the stern and then drop in.

On the call-out when Graham got the medal the problem was that the wave actually broke right over us, and we appeared to have gone straight through it. The helicopter crew said they lost sight of us entirely and were under the impression we had capsized. On both occasions I felt that the boat could handle the situation, but at what size the wave gets to the point when it knocks us back I just don't know -1 haven't yet felt that is going to happen.

Graham Raines: When that particular wave hit we were very lucky. It was so large that the top was breaking and as we went up the helicopter pilot said the top of it broke in the bow of the boat, pushing it back down.

Nick Botham: We operate a 3-man crew on our D class, whereas some boats have two, so we've got a man forward as ballast. It's OKunder those circumstances. In daylight, you can see the seas are heavy and read where you want to go next. When we had the casualty on board she was like a camel to handle. With his storm gear full of water he must have been 20 stone. Once he was on board she wouldn't go anywhere, no response, and it was a struggle to keep her head to sea and get out of the breakers.

We are trying a D class with twin-engines, although it is very much in the research and development stage. Have you any thoughts or comments? Botham: Well, it would have come in handy at one moment on that job. After we got the casualty on board and I was making my way out to sea we crested a wave, and I rolled off the throttle as you do. Perhaps I let it go a bit too far, or slightly too early but the motor stalled as a wave came under the boat. I thought we'd had it then. Luckily she started first pull - an electric start might have come in handy! James: It's worth noting that even with the number of people that we had on board in quite severe conditions the boat was still able to make it head to sea with one engine. I would not want to try to run with the sea behind me with one engine though - that would really have been a problem. While she was still head to sea in those conditions I felt she was handling the situation quite well. In fact coming back across the bar with one engine, with three of us on board, she was fine.

The Portsmouth Atlantic 21 stood by us while we came across - but apart from one occasion when Frank (Frank Dunster, the helmsman - Ed) had to push the throttle hard and run before a wave she handled well. She seemed to start to surf, you felt there was no steerage and she started to go. But that was only once in the whole time we crossed the bar, and the conditions were severe.

Raines: She was very impressive with one engine.

Clarke: Do you find the response is sufficiently rapid with one engine to get her going fast enough before the one astern catches you? James: She's just much more sluggish with one engine, but once you get her going she seems to handle the conditions quite well. I would not have wanted more people on board - in fact we transferred one back to the Portsmouth lifeboat because we wanted to reduce weight.

Clarke: We exercise on one engine, and as you say the least number of people on the boat the better. If you get one chap forward to trim the boat she'll come up on the plane on one engine It is true to say that with a single engine speed is less than maximum wave speed, so with a following sea the waves are going to overtake you, and that is where you are vulnerable.

Recovering survivors Let us consider the difficulties of getting survivors out of the water in heavy sea conditions.

Clarke: Well, it's a matter of horses for courses at the time.

Sometimes you can come up into the wind, sometimes you can come across the wind. We haven't really experienced problems here. We have never tried to take a guy out of the water under the conditions that Graham and Rod had, but normally we have no problems at all.

Raines: We practice it quite often, going out to sea and on the bar and picking them up between the waves. But on the day of our service the seas were a lot different, a lot closer, so we couldn' t do it in the way we had trained! Botham: It's obviously an easier proposition with the D class in general terms because of the lower freeboard. It took a lot of grunt toget our casualty on board, and it took three of us to get him in the boat.

It's less of a problem in a D class than in an Atlantic because you're not leaning down over the side, so it's less of a struggle.

James: Previously I had never experienced any particular difficulty in getting people out of the water, and always thought the Atlantic was particularly good for that.

When the adrenalin is flowing and you are really in a hurry you can pick people out which normally you just wouldn't shift.

The problem we faced was the rise and fall of the boat which was so severe that when I leaned over to grab Graham he just disappeared from me because of the size of the waves. Twice I ran forward to get the first opportunity of —- - — catching him, but on both occasions the bow rose so far that he was out of arms' reach even with me leaning right over. When I finally got hold of him he was too far away, I grabbed him, overbalanced and fell overboard. In the normal operational position that has never been something that I've ever worried about.

Rapid response Can we talk about the advantages of the smaller, faster lifeboats. The rapid response, the very fast transit to the casualty and the benefits of catching the casualty early on in an incident.

James: When we describe a call-out some ™ ~~ ~ people ask why couldn't the casualty have sorted itself out. But the Atlantic, and the faster large lifeboats, respond so quickly that they often resolve a problem before it has become serious.

It can be misleading. We've often crossed the bar and reached a casualty within a matter of four or five minutes and found them drifting into a situation which if left another five or ten minutes would have been very serious.

I think it is difficult to evaluate how successful we actually are, as a lot of the calls are to situations which if left would have deteriorated rapidly and got more serious.

Clarke: The Atlantic is a rapid-response boat. Her speed is one of her greatest assets and can be paramount in saving life - but she can only be driven as hard as the sea will allow.

The Exposure factor In the under 10m lifeboats you are exposed to the elements all the time. How do you feel this affects your performance? Clarke: It's the endurance factor. Some of our services are local, on your doorstep so to speak, but others are 30-.40-, or 50-mile round trips at all times of the year...

/ see Graham raising his eyebrows. It just shows how different operations can be in different parts of the country. To you that kind 'A dry suit is a massive advantage...

but if it's a person in the water you just sling on a lifejacket and go' Nick Botham - Whitby of distance is quite normal. Five or six miles to Graham's crew is a long haul.

James: That's right, we wouldn't expect to go more than seven miles.

Clarke: Searching after dark, in good sea conditions but very poor visibility I've knelt for three-and-a-half hours at the Decca, and on a flat calm night my knees suffer, but if there is any slop running it is impossible to do that.

On the night we were out to the Portunus, we were just taking the latitude and longitude straight off the navigator and passing it across on tjie VHP. That's as much as you can do in bad •• - •a weather.

One of our jobs in bad visibility was 12 miles off, another occasion we've been 14 miles off.

Sometimes I think the Atlantic is being asked to do far more than she was ever designed to do.

James: At our station, we found ourselves doing a lot of long searches, and if the temperature is below a certain level we now change crews every three hours - because after about three hours it doesn't matter how much clothing you have on, you get progressively colder and colder.

You can always change back again. We've done 12-13 hour searches and in that situation you deteriorate without being aware of it. That's the problem, you are getting so cold that you don't ™" ~ realise it.

Protecting the crew Can we discuss protective clothing? Botham: I think it is very adequate. Wearing a dry suit is a massive advantage over offshore clothing anyway, and if you've got one of those on for the duration of a normal job there is no problem.

Having said that, occasionally there is no time to put a dry suit on.

If the job is a person in the water it's a case of slinging a lifejacket on and going - and worry about clothing later.

If there is somebody in the water drowning it's seconds that count.

A dry suit takes 30 seconds to a minute to put on at the best of times, if you're lucky and everything goes right! Then again, we are not a winter station. But in April it gets very cold, and the Cymba job was fairly cold.

One other service that springs to mind is when we had 27-odd school kids cut-off and we ferried them all out to the larger boat. I put a dry suit on, but one of the other lads didn't. We were about an hourand- a-half ferrying the kids out, we did seven or eight beach landings and the other lad was absolutely blue because he just had normal gear on.

This proves the point that a couple of minutes spent putting on the right gear before launching pays dividends.At the limits Clarke: The dry suits are very, very good. One night we went after a sprat boat 16 miles south-west of Hunstanton. Another fishing vessel took her in tow and we escorted them ten miles to the north, and then a 16-mile run back home. One of the lads in his haste forgot to put a thermal suit on underneath - and he was cold! You never know when, where or how long you are going to be but I think if you' ve got the equipment on you can take it off if it's too hot.

Raines: At our station we've also bought some Mascot jackets, because we find in some conditions you need an extra layer. I always stress that to the crew. Over dress - you can always take it off.

James: A lot of our calls are comparatively short distances, but you are often called from one casualty to another. On a busy day you may go out for what appears to be a 20-minute job, and you are still out there three or four hours later.

Raines: We have exercises wearing dry suits and as soon as you start working, like in a mud rescue, you get very hot. Once we went out when when it was cold and sleeting and I got very hot going across some mud. The biggest problem is that when you stop you get very cold - quickly! Botham: If it's in severe conditions, and if you know it is going to be cold and a long way off, maybe 20 minutes ride down, then its definitely worth getting good gear on, because if you are frozen to death you are no use to anyone when you get there.

Do you like the helmets and visors? James: When we were first given visors we all complained bitterly about them, but now I can't imagine how we operated in a heavy sea without them, particularly in the winter when that stinging freezing cold water catches you in the eye. Now, if I lift the visor for a while I find it so painful. It staggers me that we operated without them.

We responded quite negatively to the helmets originally, but we've had a number of occasions in the last few years when crews would have been injured without them. Particularly Graham on the call where he got his medal, he was run over by an Atlantic 21 twice, and his head cracked and banged around like mad - if he hadn't had his helmet on we might well have been in a much" more serious situation.

That is heartening to hear, and I hope that other stations who are perhaps not as converted as you will think again.

Working in the water On your medal services two of you went into the water, one voluntarily and one involuntarily. How difficult is it to decide when the best course of action is to stay in the boat and when it's best to go into the water? How do you feel going in the water from an Atlantic 21 or a D class compares with going in from, say, an Arun or a Tyne? Raines: Ithinkl'dfeelalotsaferbeingpickedup by an Atlantic 21 than an Arun -1 wouldn't like going underneath that! The decision to go in the water was really made when we saw the chap. We knew there was no way we were going to manoeuvre to pick him up and he was visibly going down. It was just one of those decisions. You come through all that to get to him and you can see him sinking, so you just jump in.

James: I just feel that getting in the water from an Atlantic is one of the skills, because we are quick to go in the water. We have dry suits on, and in that situation if Graham could support the guy, then there was a much better chance of getting him.

Raines: The helicopter winchman said afterwards he was really pleased there was someone inafterwards he was really pleased there was someone in the water to help him get the casualty in the strop.

Clarke: We always have two crew in dry suits. Normally with kids on lilos or windsurfers one of the guys always goes straight in.

James: It's the same as the visors, we don't know how we operated without dry suits. It's noticeable that when you are rescuing someone the major difference between you and the casualty is that you have adry suit on, and are dry and warm, and they are sopping wet and cold.

It would be very difficult to perform some of the rescues we've done in recent years without the dry suits because the crew themselves would turn into casualties.

Raines: The only bits that get cold now are your feet and hands. I use the Musto gloves, you just take them off wring them out and put them back on again.

James: Hands are not resolved. I cannot find the right combination to allow me to feel the throttle and eveything else and at the same time keep my hands warm. We found the issue black rubber gloves with thermal inners still don't keep your hands warm. As the water hits them its movement across the glove tends to make the hands cold. The orange Fireball gloves get so cold you can't bend your fingers and so you are back to windsurfing gloves with leather backs, or something like that. It doesn't seem an easy problem to solve.

We are still looking for the right answer, and it is interesting that even people like the Sen'ices have come up against the same problem and cannot find the right answer.First aid Let us turn to first-aiding in small lifeboats.

Clarke: You are very, very limited to how much you can do.

Obviously if you have recovered someone unconscious, or something like that, you have to get some air into him, do a bit of resuscitation.

In most circumstances broken bones have to wait until you get ashore.

Raines: We haven't had anyone with a broken leg yet but the new RNLI fracture straps are marvellous, because they're so quick to put on you can immobilise someone straight away. They stow away nicely too.Botham: There can be very few situations in D class where you can give effective first aid, certainly in heavy seas. To have crew members not concentrating on what they are doing can be worse for the casualty. Obv iously you have to do instantaneous mouth-to-mouth, and that sort of thing, but there is very little room.

James: Our response to most first aid situations is to decide whether we should take the casualty off the boat they are on, or leave them there rather than risk transferring an injured casualty to us. In most cases we leave them on the boat and tow the boat in. They are on a 30ft or 40ft yacht perhaps, and to put them on to our 21- footer is a shock to them - and then charging at 30 knots across the sea would be worse.Towing That leads us nicely into the next topic, towing with Atlantic 21s.

Clarke: We've done a reasonable amount of it.

One job made us realise just what an Atlantic will tow, or at least get of trouble. The wind and tide had shoved a 45ft long, steel, twinbeamer weighing 25 tons on the bank, and she couldn't get off. Wewent inside her, turned and came out under her bow. They chucked the tow rope as we came out, and we had enough power to get her head round into the wind. With her going full ahead she got herself out.

James: A couple of times recently we've had to call in a larger lifeboat, because there is a limit to what an Atlantic can do. For example we were towing a 34/35ft yacht out of difficult conditions and it was fine going head to sea. I was quite happy to take her, but we were not making much ground and it was a case then of holding her until the larger lifeboat arrives.

Raines: It's a question of 'first aid'. The big boat, the 'doctor', can come along afterwards. We were keeping the boat head to sea, and stopping her going on to some rocks until the Tyne class lifeboat came along.James: The Atlantic has proved herself a very good workhorse in that way, we have towed in anything up to 51 ft motor torpedo boat. We had to wait until the tide changed, but it was perfectly possible to shift her around and to operate.

Clarke: I remember the first time we had an exercise with a flank station which had a 37ft Oakley. We said we'd give them a tow and they laughed at us. We got a line aboard and towed the Oakley as fast as she could steam! The call Fast response is the key to the success of under 10m lifeboats, how do your paging and crewing arrangements work? Raines: As soon as the bleepers go off the first Raines: As soon as the bleepers go off the first " ""™ person at the station rings the Coastguard, to see what the job is. We find that's quite important. One, they could say 'Sorry we've dialled the wrong number', two, the problem could have been sorted out, but three, if it's a swimmer in the water you're gone with the first three crew members there. We also check the secretary heard his Weeper.

Clarke: We are now on a VHP system. The honorary secretary's on British Telecom so we don't get the problem that when he's being paged all the crew rush down to the station! We have 16 lads on the crew and nine pagers. The tractor driver has his all the time, and everyone has a 'double'. A lot of the lads work several miles away and we work on a system of 'double cover'.

You've got eight bleepers between 16 guys and you want four guys out of the eight to crew the boat - so you are always sure of getting a crew. You normally know from your initial information how urgent the situation is and I have a rough idea of what lads are ere wing the boat. I might say 'well, you can stand down today, let someone else go' and there is never any problem.

James: We have found that rotating the crew has got rid of a lot of problems. Because of the geography of the island, three of us were actually doing all the calls - and that' s not good for the station in terms of the morale of the other crew, or indeed their development or training.

My experience has been that it is the experience on the call-outs that develops the skills of the crew. And if they only get one or two a year over a long period of time, they go stale. Even though they are doing the training it's important to share the experience out among the crew.

Raines: One of the call-out problems in the Solent is that the aerial is at Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight, and VHP being line-of-sight if anyone in the middle transmits just as the tone's about to go off that's the whole bleeper system ruined. At weekends there's quite a lot of activity on the air ...

James: ... It's the sheer quantity of radio transmissions. You can imagine the amount that is going all the time in the Solent, particularly at 25 watts. I think some of us are sad at the passing of the maroons...

Clarke:.. We still use them as well as the pagers ...

James: We haven't for a long time because of the geography of the Island. On one occasion we set them off at the station and Selsey lifeboat crew arrived at their station! None of us had heard them from as close as 100 yards away because of the way the wind was blowing.

They were no good in that sense, but they were a tremendous public relations exercise. When they were set off from the centre of the island everybody knew the lifeboat had launched. There are still people living on Hayling who don't know we have a lifeboat station! Raines: Some other stations still fire one hand-held maroon, to let everyone, including the wives, know the lifeboat has gone out.Clarke: We still use them, partly for the publicity aspect, it does make for a tremendous amount of interest from the beach and brings people into the boathouse.

But the main reason is to alert the remainder of the crew and the shore helpers, those not on pagers. Once you've got your call you've got your crew and your tractor driver. You get in and get going. When you come back everyone else is there, the lads go upstairs and have coffee while she's refilled and washed down by the crew that the maroons brought down.

Raines: We have a housing estate nearby, and if we fire maroons from the station we can't get to the boathouse, because of people going there for a look.

James: There's no perfect solution, and I think the bleepers are anenormous improvement. When we had to use the phone it was murder - when you had a duty day you couldn't go away from the phone.

New equipment Let's look at the future. What single item of equipment would you like to see that you haven't got now? Clarke: A wheelhouse and an Aga? Botham: ... and slippers! Seriously, I think they are very well equipped for the job they do, certainly the job ours does. I don't think they are wanting for much.

Raines: Better charging. At night if you use the searchlight for half an hour and were to go up a wave and stall the engine you might not be ableto start it again.

We are addressing this problem. New type batteries have been fitted and there are improvements in train. All Atlantics will soon be modified.

James: One of the problems seems to be complexity. In other words by increasing the complexity of the boat, you are increasing the number of things that can go wrong. I am not sure where the balance lies. At the moment the boat is set up very well for 99 per cent of the jobs she is asked to do. The radio communication to the helmsman has improved enormously with the headset, but communication between the crew is a major problem in difficult conditions. I don't know if an intercom system is feasible.

How about a VHP IDF if we could get one small enough? Do you feel it would make your job easier on the Atlantic? Clarke: Yes, any aid to make her more efficient. If you have a casualty transmitting you have a direct bearing to run to. If you are out in bad visibility and you can get a transmission from the station you have a reciprocal bearing to run for home.

In my civilian job we get involved with a lot of S AR work. Once we were looking for ayacht 30 miles off in a gale of wind, and we were DF-ing a helicopter hovering above the casualty at 28 miles. It's a grand bit of kit.

Raines: It could be simple left-or-right indicator really.The future That leads us on to the future of under 10 metre lifeboats. They are doing something like 60 per cent of the Institution's work. How do you see development in the future of rigid inflatables.

Clarke: Well, perhaps we've gone as far as we can go with the 21 s? The Atlantic is a superb boat, but we are putting all this equipment on to her, so do we want to look at something slightly bigger? Obviously different stations have different needs, and I think in some areas perhaps we need to go for something with slightly more crew protection. Personally I would like to see something slightly bigger.

James: I can see with a station like yours, Alan, and if I was doing jobs of that sort of distance, a bigger boat would give more protection.

Certainly with a station like ours I feel the Atlantic is probably about the right size. We operate a lot in shallow water in the harbour, there are occasions when we run aground and now we have the ability physically to shift the boat around if you have to. That's quite important, if you've got a bigger boat that complicates things.

Botham: Perhaps moving on to a semi rigid hull for the D class? They say the new RNLI design (the EAJ6-Ed) has better sea keeping qualities. It has better turning abilities because it has a better vee, and I think that will probably develop further into a semi-rigid, with a glassfibre hull and perhaps a more powerful motor, a 60hp - with an electric start! James: Clearly we are doing very different jobs with the same boat, it seems logical that the Atlantic class will evolve to meet the needs of some stations where the standard version perhaps isn't ideal at the moment.

Helicopters Let us discuss helicopters. In the last ten years they have become more sophisticated. They now have a night capability, but there are still a lot of incidents where a lifeboat is by far the best vehicle.Raines: We work very well with them.

Bristows have only recently taken over from the Royal Navy at Lee-on-Solent and we haven't done that many jobs with them yet. Probably one of the first times we did work with them in anger was the medal service we were on! We had never done a high line transfer before. We'd only discussed it the week before and arranged to do an exercise before we needed to use it. Fortunately they explained how it all worked because the next week we did one! Clarke: We had a service a few weeks ago toa fishing vessel taking water.The Coastguard despatched us immediately, and the helicopter from Coltishall We got there very quickly, and by the time we got a man aboard and assessed the situation the chopper was still outward bound. We were able to divert the chopper to Wells boathouse and bring a pump out. The vessel had a lot of derricks and uprights, so when the chopper got to the scene he put the pump down into the Atlantic and we then put it aboard the vessel.

James: On a couple of call-outs, where we have been pushing the Atlantic to its limit, it has been very nice to have the helicopter over us - as a back-up. Certainly when Graham went over the side, had the worst happened and the Atlantic capsized, there was the back-up that the helicopter could have come in and sorted us out.

They are also useful for getting casualties off to hospital when they are in a bad way. Again in that incident, where we couldn't really put a casualty comfortably in our boat we got them off to hospital within minutes, whereas it would have taken us three-quarters of an hour.

Raines: That day particularly we were glad to use him, because we were on one engine and couldn't have got the casualty ashore quickly James: They can cover so much ground. It is nice to know that you can get cover in a particular area, and find something quickly.

Finally, they are very helpful in training. It is very difficult to set up a situation which is real and which tests people, and no matter how many times I go out with a helicopter that darn great thing thunderingover your head does get the adrenalin running - it is a very good situation to test and practice skills that otherwise you don't have the opportunity to do. There's a lot going for them.

You see them as very much complementary? James: Yes. I don't see them as 'competition'. They deal with different situations, there's no way we can get to some of the sort of casualties they're dealing with - we just don't have the capability for long distances or the sort of speed.

Crew numbers You have a smaller number of crew aboard than on a larger lifeboat.

Do you find this puts extra pressure on you, doyoufeelyou have to be more flexible, to become more a jack of all trades? Clarke: We always take four.

Raines: If it's rough, at night, the standard crew of three, otherwise it's four. If it's a search for a person who's, say, trying to swim across from Portsmouth to Hayling and it's flat calm you take five. The more eyes the better.

Clarke: As your crew comes on over the years you try to get the guys to do everyone else's job, so that they know how to do everything on the boat, for obvious reasons. If three get chucked out and there's one aboard you want to know he can come round and get you.

James: I've introduced a system where each exercise, which is every three weeks, is run by a different crew man, right from the moment we arrive. He's in charge and runs the whole thing. You do have to be able to do everybody's job. This year I've been radio operator, helmsman and the general dogsbody. Everybody's been in that situation at some stage.

Clarke: I should imagine your crew is much the same as ours, where they come from all walks of life. What about training? James: We don't have any professional seaman. We've got one crew member who has an RYA certificate and there is a sailing instructor, but other than that we have no sailing tradition. Maybe that's an advantage, we do not have to re-train anyone from a fishing tradition or anything like that. They all come in new to the game. So it's not a problem.

Clarke: There are only four of us who are seamen, so to speak. One lad was coxswain of a water authority launch, another had about ten years fishing, and another had a great deal of time fishing. I go to sea for a living as well.for a living as well.

The Atlantic can be quite a lively little thing, and we find lads from all walks of life are the better ones to have.

If they are youngsters and you can school them, they seem to adapt and accept the handling of an Atlantic 21 far better. It took me quite a long while to get used to it, but on the night we went up to the Portunus we had one young lad who was then not quite 18, he didn't bat an eyelid.

Clarke: Once you have learned the skill of driving an Atlantic 21 you can get back aboardthree or four weeks later and you haven't forgotten anything. I drive what amounts to an Arun around all week, and it's a different world, but when you are on that Atlantic you haven't forgotten anything, its still all there.

James: We find that when we get a new crew member it is impossible to train them in preparation for the first half dozen calls.

It seems to be something to do with the adrenalin or the excitement when they first go out. Everything is happening very rapidly and they tend to get an overload of information. They try to take everything in and as a result they become very clumsy and not very helpful. We use a new crew member as a sort of extra body, it's a (earning situation.

As time goes on they begin to be able to ignore certain bits of information coming at them so they can concentrate on the issue in hand. Riding an Atlantic is a dramatic experience and they tend to be overwhelmed by the crashing and banging, whereas as you gain experience you just ignore that. Nothing replaces experience.

Exactly what makes a good crew man is a very elusive thing. I think it is something to do with being able to eliminate from their minds large quantities of information which they do not need to worry themselves about, and to think ahead and react in such a way that they can do the jobs that you want quickly and efficiently.

Gentlemen, thank you for your time, and congratulations on your awards..