The Royal Bermuda Regiment recently hosted a two-week training exercise with other British Overseas Territories coast guards in the Caribbean. ROYAL BERMUDA REGIMENT
THE WATCH STAFF
Five British Overseas Territories recently took part in a two-week training session led by the United Kingdom Coast Guard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI), a nonprofit that trains coast guards globally, with the goal of improving the interoperability of Caribbean search and rescue (SAR) operations.
Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands participated in water-based exercises and tabletop exercises at the Royal Bermuda Regiment’s Coast Guard headquarters in Sandys.
His Majesty’s Coastguard Cmdr. Callum Jarvis said one of the key elements of the training was to introduce new scenarios to the Caribbean coast guards.
“A big part of this has been using the experiences of the guys — they’ve worked within their own organizations and had their own experiences, so we’ve been drawing those out of them but also exposing them to things that don’t happen so often, so not your usual type of cases but still a potential threat,” Callum said in a Royal Bermuda Regiment news release.
“We’ve looked at the general trend of what happens in Bermuda — lots of small leisure boats, that sort of thing — and we’ve also covered incidents with merchant vessels, for example, which guys here aren’t quite so used to. We focused on Bermuda as a location, but things can happen anywhere globally and hopefully now if there is something they’re less familiar with, they will be well prepared for it.”
The training scenarios included locating overdue vessels and setting up mayday relay protocols.
Dave Whiddon, a RNLI senior international programs manager, said, “The whole idea of our international work is to help organizations build their search and rescue capacity. We like to be able to share our expertise and knowledge, but also it’s a good opportunity for us to learn as well and bring back learning to our own organizations.”
Royal Bermuda Regiment Lance Cpl. Quinton Burgess said the value of the exercise is that he can now train others.
“They’ve been here training us to be trainers, to take the information and impart it to the rest of our teams. We’ve been doing lots of things: search and rescue coordination, search and rescue tasking, man overboard drills, docking drills, coming alongside, anchoring drills and a lot of class work as well,” said Burgess in the news release. “These are skills that we will use and they’re also things that we will teach new recruits when they come to the Coast Guard.”
Midshipman Ericka Rockett-McBean of the Cayman Islands Coast Guard enjoyed the opportunity to learn next to crews from different jurisdictions.
“It’s nice to know and relate to people in other overseas territories.”