SAREX18 practical exercise

SAREX18 kicked off with a real call out for an overturned Waka. 

Coastguard Mana was activated using the standard callout procedure from our duty officer and then crew notifications by text message. The crew assembled at our base at the Mana Cruising Club and broke into an Incident Management Team and  a boat deployment team.

The IMT started with developing the Intelligence information collection plan for the deveoping SAREX information and the actual weather conditions and our available assets. Assets avaialbvle were our 4x4 and inshore vessel Mana Rescue2 (5.8 metre open boat) From that they ran a risk assessment to determine if it was safe to deploy our vessel and vehicle. MR2 was not deployed as the sea conditions were rough and for a training exercise there was no need to risk the crew.  The IMT group went to the Porirua Emergency Operations Centre and worked the SAREX with the IMT and masters for MR1 and MR2 working together on the exercise as notionally deployed assets.

The SAREX provided valuable training for the IMT and masters/crew as they had time and dry space to work through the problems and develop solutions. 

MR2 was practicaly deployed on the inner harbour with a trainee crew but as part of the SAREX