A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ...
...George McNaughton (Coastguard Rescue Officer)
"Up at 8 for a morning’s work at the farm. Spring is busy with fields to cultivate and crops to sow. I have the last few acres to powerharrow before we can complete sowing the barley this afternoon, weather permitting! It’s a fairly relaxed morning listening to Radio 2 going up and down the field stopping every so often to wrestle with the odd boulder in the soil.
At 12:30 and with skint knuckles I head back to the farm for lunch and to hand over to father as I go into town to do a few hours in the office before Coastguard Training this evening at 7. My other job as a surveyor for a rural land agent company takes me all over the southwest and I find myself in deepest Lanarkshire in a different field discussing pipeline issues with some farmers. 4pm, head back to office to make up some maps for Scottish Water then a quick bite to eat before heading to the station across the river, for our weekly voluntary training night, I wonder what is planned for us ?!
An hour later, we are all on exercise at Dunure searching for a missing walker overdue from a coastal walk. Search the whole area, nothing, jees they’re really testing us this time, then at 9pm one of our Girvan brethren masquerading as our casualty is located and attended to, exercise over we head back to debrief, coffee, banter, and home to bed, a fairly typical busy Wednesday, phew ! Not !
After an hour or two of watching top gear repeats I’m about to turn in off goes the pager ! .. beep beep, beep beep !! “Clyde Coastguard paging Ayr Rescue Team, report of a woman in the water South Beach Troon”. Its 11:48, back out of bed, throw on some clothes, in car, get to station, meet the troops (again), exchange pleasantries as we kit up, get more information, depart in the wagon heading for south beach. Arrive on scene 00:12 and rendezvous with the Police, only information we have is she might be on the beach somewhere, so its decided we spilt into two teams, alpha and bravo, and start searching from either end of the beach, from the waterline right up to the dunes and in the grassed areas towards the golf course, she could be anywhere, and as always time is of the essence for the casualty and in terms of the weather. We need to work quickly but methodically.
Its always quite surreal finding myself in these places at this time of night completely randomly, its part of the appeal for me ! At 00:40 casualty is found, first aid administered, report made to Clyde who calls the ambulance to a nearby car park and it takes 6 of us to recover the casualty on the stretcher from the beach. She is treated for the effects of Hypothermia and is taken to hospital, where she makes a full recovery. Eventually, at 1:05am after a quick debrief, we depart the scene for base, clean up and head home for some well needed kip, I’m shattered. Tomorrow is another day !".
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