Christmas Closure and Thank You

The Marine Rescue Tower will be closed over the Christmas period from 1600 hours on Christmas Eve, (Saturday, 24 December), Christmas Day, (Sunday, 25 December) and Boxing Day, (Monday, 26 December 2022). The radios will continue to be monitored over this period, by our home-based operators, but only emergency calls will be answered. We will re-open at 0600 hours on Tuesday, 27 December. For all emergencies, please call 000.

A big thank you to all our awesome volunteers for another wonderful year. All the hours you give, often at very short notice and in all types of conditions, is greatly appreciated. A huge thank you to your families and partners for letting you give your time to make our Group “The Best in the West”!! A special thank you, also, to the employers in the local community for supporting our group by allowing their employee/s to attend to an emergency incident as well as having time off to enable volunteers to update their skills by participating in mandatory training.

A huge thank you again to our wonderful community for the magnificent response to our fund-raising efforts during the year for the installation of our pontoon and associated infrastructure. Your amazing support at our Trivia Night and Easter Raffle as well as generous donations during the year made it all happen!!!! What a great community we have!

The following are our Group’s statistics for the last 12 months:

• Concerns (unattended vessels, shark sightings, etc): 23

• Overdue boats: 17

• Promotional events: 3

• Standbys for our vessels: 10

• Training – on vessels: 36

• Pathways training: 72

• Flare sightings: 6

• EPIRBS: 4 with 3 successful recoveries

• Tow ins: 24

• R1 “Crikey” deployed: 22 occasions

• R2 “Bay Watch” deployed: 44 occasions

The Committee would like to acknowledge all our members for delivering an awesome service all year round.

We wish all our boating members and supporters a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Stay safe, wear your life jacket, carry your flares and emergency beacon, lodge your boating plans with us or another local Marine Rescue Group and look after each other! Safe Boating!