24rd September 2019. This summer has, in many ways, been a busy one for one of the National Coastwatch Institutions newest stations at Hornsea in Yorkshire.
They celebrated their first birthday in August and now feel that the station is well and truly established and making a contribution both to the local community and to the NCI nationally. August also saw ten trainees passing their assessments to become fully trained watchkeepers. Each one has a special story about how they got involved with NCI, with the top story reflecting one member’s experience of “smelling and tasting the best bacon butty ever” at one of our events.
The Hornsea team enjoyed the warm weather and local summer events bringing extra visitors to our beautiful town and coastline. Many people enjoyed a day on the beach, building sandcastles, swimming, whilst many others took to boats, kayaks, jet skis and body boards to have fun on the waves. And all the time the dedicated NCI volunteers were working to make sure that if help was needed, they could support a fast response.
Mike Johnson, the Station Manager at NCI Hornsea commented “All the initial hard work put in by the original team has paid off with. The number of qualified watchkeepers has increased opening the opportunity of providing an additional evening watch between 17.00 hrs to 20.00 hrs on a Saturday and Sunday across the summer school holidays. The summer brought an additional buzz to the station. We had many visitors asking a wide range of questions, consulting our tide tables and stopping outside the station with the dogs to give them a drink of water.”
The work of raising funds to run the station, improve and develop the facilities and equipment continues.This role within the organisation is critical in ensuring we can maintain our high levels of service. “The Hornsea fundraising team are well organised and maintain their work to deliver a regular income. We owe them our thanks” commented Mike.
The photograph shows Ron Charlton being congratulated by examiner Graham Finch after successfully completing his assessment. “Better than the bacon butty” commented Ron!!