Basic Safety Training
Oct. 18th, 2006 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arwen_luneThat was fun. The ship is a Megayacht, of the type 'we spoil the rotten'. They have a lot of space for everything and the crew side of the ship is pretty comfortable, certainly a lot more spacious and luxurious than what you'd find on a tallship. Good atmosphere too, at least right now during their warf period. I'm not sure if I'd want to work on it. It pays pretty well and they do a lot of fun stuff (mainly Carib cruises and a lot of playing with the tenders & jetski's) but mostly for the deck crew it's cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Plus I don't think I'd be good with people (guests) who are quite that spoilt.
Monday we did first aid, which mostly wasn't new. Tuesday basic firefighting, handling, drills and procedures. We learned to handle compressed air systems, how to set it up, put it on, use it. Learned to navigate smoked-up spaces and search for people in them. (we don't do more than basic fire fighting, ie. beginning fires. We do however sweep in spaces that are not burning but filled with smoke). At the end of the day we did a full drill with a completely smoke-filled bosun's stoke (full of nooks, crannies and bumps to hit yourself on). I found the victim and got him out of there, all good. It was a bit scary and pretty cool.
Today the best part, we did the theory on personal safety devices, rescue devices (flares, etc) and then suited up in immersion suits and life jackets over them and went into the IJ with a big splash. Immersions suits are supposed to keep you mostly dry, but ours were leaky so while not freezing it was pretty cold, and weird, but fun. We did some floating positions together - big circle, little circle, in a crocodile line, the HELP (Heat Escape Lessening Position, cute that). We inflated a life raft and all climbed in, paddled it about, then we practised turning over a liferaft that inflated upside down. All in these big unwieldy suits with teletubby hands, they were like big stiff mittens.
Then we jumped off the A deck, which was about 5 metres above water level. That's quite a far fall and it seemed to take a long time to surface, even though I'm told I popped right back up. Caughed and spluttered a bit and was fine. It was pretty neat to get to try all this stuff in the calm of an exercise; the reality of a real calamity would not be a good moment to do it for the first time. At least now I know how to handle the stuff, and could concentrate on the problems at that point.
Monday we did first aid, which mostly wasn't new. Tuesday basic firefighting, handling, drills and procedures. We learned to handle compressed air systems, how to set it up, put it on, use it. Learned to navigate smoked-up spaces and search for people in them. (we don't do more than basic fire fighting, ie. beginning fires. We do however sweep in spaces that are not burning but filled with smoke). At the end of the day we did a full drill with a completely smoke-filled bosun's stoke (full of nooks, crannies and bumps to hit yourself on). I found the victim and got him out of there, all good. It was a bit scary and pretty cool.
Today the best part, we did the theory on personal safety devices, rescue devices (flares, etc) and then suited up in immersion suits and life jackets over them and went into the IJ with a big splash. Immersions suits are supposed to keep you mostly dry, but ours were leaky so while not freezing it was pretty cold, and weird, but fun. We did some floating positions together - big circle, little circle, in a crocodile line, the HELP (Heat Escape Lessening Position, cute that). We inflated a life raft and all climbed in, paddled it about, then we practised turning over a liferaft that inflated upside down. All in these big unwieldy suits with teletubby hands, they were like big stiff mittens.
Then we jumped off the A deck, which was about 5 metres above water level. That's quite a far fall and it seemed to take a long time to surface, even though I'm told I popped right back up. Caughed and spluttered a bit and was fine. It was pretty neat to get to try all this stuff in the calm of an exercise; the reality of a real calamity would not be a good moment to do it for the first time. At least now I know how to handle the stuff, and could concentrate on the problems at that point.