Falmouth Coastguard’s August: 17 call-outs across the bay

Seventeen times last month, Falmouth’s volunteer coastguard rescue team dropped what they were doing and headed for the coast. Some of the shouts lasted minutes, others ran long into the night, and between them they cover almost everything a Cornish coastal team can expect to be paged for in a busy summer.

📷Credit: Falmouth Coastguard Rescue Team

Missing people, and the searches that followed

Three of August’s call-outs were missing person searches, and two of them fell either side of midnight. The team was out searching the Maenporth area from 11.04pm on Saturday 2 August, and back in the same spot just after midnight on Sunday 17 August. In between, on Thursday 13 August, a search was launched at Castle Beach. None of the outcomes are detailed in the team’s own round-up, but the pattern says something about how much of a coastguard team’s work happens after dark, long after the beaches have emptied.

Rescues on the beaches and in the water

The rest of August’s log reads like a tour of Falmouth’s coastline. A trauma call led to an evacuation from Gyllyngvase Beach on Wednesday 12 August, and a trauma and water rescue followed two days later at Restronguet. Grebe Beach in Mawnan needed a technical rope rescue on Sunday 16 August, the kind of job that calls on specialist kit rather than a straightforward walk down to the shore. Towards the end of the month, crews were called to people stuck on rocks at Newporth, near Maenporth, on Friday 28 August, and to persons in the water at the Ferry Boat Inn on Helford Passage the following afternoon. Earlier in the month, on Saturday 9 August, the team investigated a report involving paddle boards at Swanpool.

The call-outs that don’t fit a pattern

Not every job is a straightforward rescue. On Saturday 1 August the team had a busy day, first providing a lift assist and helping ambulance crews at Porth Sawson in Mawnan, then assisting the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit at Prisk Cove, also in Mawnan, that same afternoon. Twice during August the team handled a TEP transport, moving a Time Expired Pyrotechnic, first in Falmouth on Monday 3 August and again in Newquay on Saturday 22 August. A vessel aground at Mylor on Sunday 23 August rounded out the month’s more unusual entries.

A team that rarely works alone

Several of August’s incidents were multi-agency jobs from the start, including a deployment in Falmouth on Wednesday 12 August and a cardiac arrest at North Quay on Monday 25 August, where the team assisted ambulance crews. Falmouth’s coastguard rescue team credited its regular partners for the month, working alongside South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Devon & Cornwall Police, Porthleven Coastguard Team, Porthoustock Coastguard Rescue Team, Mullion Coastguard Rescue Team, Newquay Coastguard Search & Rescue Team, Cornwall Air Ambulance, Falmouth Lifeboat and Coast Medic.

The full list, shared by Falmouth Coastguard Rescue Team on Facebook, runs from a Saturday morning lift assist at the start of August to a Saturday afternoon water incident at Helford Passage right at the end of it. Whatever September brings, it’s unlikely to be quiet for long.