BCU 5* Training Diary

By: David H. Johnston on Wednesday September 22, 2010

Published in Teaching

BCU 5* Training. Photo Credit: Simon Willis If your goal is to one day sign-up for the BCU 5* training but unsure of what exactly it entails, head over to Simon Willis's blog and read for yourself as he recently participated in the traing with Gordon Brown and Ken Nicol from Skyak Adventures.

The posting is very choppy and it's almost like he only has three minutes to capture his thoughts to paper before his taskmasters have another lesson to teach him with their giant whips.

Sounds like a great time and it makes me want to jump onboard tomorrow.

Below is part of the entry for day three:

[blockquote]Day Three. It is. Kyle Rhea on a 5.5m tide, zipping at 8kn with an opposing wind. Breaking in and breaking out. Fail to break out and you're on your way to Mallaig. (Bye Simon!)

Absolutely no photos - hands in death grip.

Breaking in to rescue a casualty - slightly different. Clipping the casualty and towing out of the flow into an eddy.

Leadership - position in group, up or downstream?

Out into the bigger stuff, jacked up by wind over tide, for rescues. Leg-hooks. Then getting a casualty with a dislocated shoulder back in their boat. Then an unconscious casualty. All in rough stuff with a buddy.

Off the water utterly, utterly knackered. So what now?

Back to the school for the second session on vectors.

Two hours plotting a voyage through the Pentland Firth, very close to a ship-eating tidal race. Early finish at 6pm.

That's because tomorrow is the rough-water day.

Oh my.[/blockquote]
More here: simon-willis.blogspot.com
Photo Credit: Simon Willis