What's it like to join lifeboat volunteers in the sea survival pool? Philly Byrde finds out ...

'This is your Captain speaking. Abandon ship! abandon ship!' Oh good. This is exactly what I want to be doing on a Monday afternoon.

As prospective crew at Tower Lifeboat Station in London, I’d already taken one plunge for the RNLI in a Thames swim test. Granted, the one I am now facing at the Sea Survival Centre is into cleaner water. But this is from a 4m platform. And in all-weather lifeboat yellows, not a well-sealed drysuit.

There’s no looking back now. Or to the side, or  at my feet for that matter. Anything but a stoic gaze to the wall ahead as I step forward and I’m likely to hit the water in a belly flop, keeping my face underwater for longer than necessary and inducing unhelpful panic.

The morning’s training has been leading up to this moment. Lectures have covered everything from packing our lifejackets to the order of priorities in a survival situation. A video featuring a muscular army diver unable to control his breathing on entering 10ºC water hasn't inspired me with confidence.

In the pool we have swum in survival suits, practised group crocodile swimming and the heat escape lessening position (or HELP, a fitting acronym since that’s the first publishable word that sprang to mind when I first entered the 14ºC water).

As sirens screech around me, I am putting into practice a ‘wet abandonment’ scenario, our last resort option of leaving a high-sided vessel that’s about to sink. I step forward into nothingness, and before I know it I’m bobbing about on the surface, fingers still clamped over my nose and mouth to keep the water out and stave off gasping from the cold.

Once I work out which way is up (not so easy when sporting a helmet and twin yellow airbags) I swim over to huddle with the gathering survivors.

As we swim to the raft, darkness descends and the rain and thunder begin. Entering a liferaft is an undignified scramble at the best of times, but with a hoseful of rain in the face it’s like wrestling with a bouncy castle in a power shower.

Once inside, we put our drill into action: cut the raft from its painter and paddle away from the scene, stream the drogue (the sea anchor that will stop us drifting) and maintain. ‘Maintain’ is a kind of ‘any other business’ procedure that gets the liferaft's lights switched on, kitbag open and the water round our ankles bailed out with helmets. Any vents not zipped flat get a relentless barrage of water from the trainers keeping watch over us in the pool.

‘Better issue the sick bags,’ says Wick volunteer Alistair ruefully as the swell builds. The atmosphere is hot and close. Suddenly my inflated lifejacket – a reassuring friend in the water – feels choking and oppressive in the cramped raft. I’m anxious to deflate it but reluctant to give my raftmates a cloud of carbon dioxide. It can only be done through a vent. Cue more water in the face from the pool guards, and more bailing.

To keep our spirits up, we sing a round of the American national anthem and Howard from Barry Dock mimics a segull returning its library books. Then we hear the unmistakeable drone of a helicopter overhead. Sensing a chance to be spotted, we put out our locator beacon and wave red flares. Help is on its way.

Thankfully volunteer crew are extremely unlikely to face this kind of situation, or at most be stranded for 1 or 2 hours. But if my shepherd’s pie sits uneasily after just 15 minutes, how would I be feeling 6 hours in? As crew, it’s vital to have that empathy when you’re reaching out to rescue someone.

I’m hoping we never put our shark attack knowledge into practice too (avoid wetting yourself and punch the shark on the nose, incidentally). But as an internationally recognised qualification, the STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) 95 certificate must cover the hazards that could be faced by professional mariners around the world.

This training is the bedrock of the RNLI’s week-long Trainee Crew course. You can see the difference by the end of the first day – stilted Mondaymorningish conversations about travel arrangements have become jokes and lively post-match analysis. It’s hard not to bond quickly when you’ve been sitting in close quarters, unsure whose boots belong where or when it might all be over. If we’d been stuck there for another 3 days, I like to think that camaraderie between volunteers would have remained. Even if we had been reduced to drinking condensation from a sponge.

How is this all funded?
The Lloyd’s Register Foundation (formerly the Lloyd's Register Educational Trust) has funded the sea survival, capsize and firefighting elements of the trainee crew course since 2009. Their pledged support over 7 years is the equivalent of an incredible £1.5M, and ensures that crews now and in the future will be putting to sea with the best possible training behind them.

The Foundation believes in taking a hands-on approach to all the programmes they fund, and in that spirit their Grants Manager Eileen Kinghan braved the sea survival experience herself. ‘It brought home to me the personal dedication of the volunteer crew members,' she explains. 'Having witnessed what they have to go through in training and know that they will have to use these skills in real sea conditions, it only heightened my respect for the volunteers.’

Thanks to the Foundation and other trusts, corporate partners, major donors and regular supporters who have built and developed RNLI College, this will be the home of RNLI lifesaving training for decades to come.