NAVY NEWS, APRIL 2008
● A breath of fresh Ayr... Gannet’s on-call Sea
King conducts training near The Cobbler
Picture: LA(Phot) Del Trotter, FRPU Clyde
Like a muppet on a string...
YOU can see the attraction.
rising 881 metres (2,900ft) above Loch Long. It’s a tree. It’s hard to understand above the roar of the Nor do you drop vertically. You fall at an angle.
There is a wonderfully bleak beauty to this
common practice area for the Gannet team. Sea King’s engines, which are also belching Avcat You have no control. You are entirely in the hands
landscape.
The fl are fi zzes for a few seconds before clouds No.5 into the back of the helicopter. of the men and women in the helicopter. You have
Grouse dash up the slopes. Squirrels scurry
of orange smoke billow and then hastily disperse Man is not meant to fl y. And if he is, then he
no means of communication, save the odd hand
between the bushes. Water rushes down gullies,
and merge with the murk – revealing just how should stay in the vehicle at all times.
signal.
tumbling over boulders, crashing into pools
strong the wind is out there. So while what I’m about to do is bread and butter
Apparently, I was supposed to land on the side
below.
“I’m not happy with this,” says Lt Cdr Lanni. to the Gannet guys, it’s positively barking mad to a
of mountain and walk down it, still attached to the
It’s clear why its beloved by climbers and
“What about that rock over there?” deskbound civvy (Think Inaction Man – Ed).
winch, before being winched back up again.
hillwalkers.
That rock over there. Who in their right mind hangs on a piece of wire
Simple.
But not today.
To the uninitiated every rock, every little outcrop, less than an inch thick 3,000ft above a loch in a
I may have written previously that it wasn’t
every boulder surrounded by tufts of grass and blizzard?
The only words to enter that pea-sized brain in
particularly bad north of the border in 2007.
piles of soft snow looks identical. Kev hooks me up to the winch lead then moves
my head evidently were ‘winch’, ‘down’, ‘rock’,
But these mountain men know their domain. to the motor lever; arrows next to it handily explain
‘back again’.
Allow me to retract that statement right now.
That rock is different from this rock. ‘up’ and ‘down’ – “so the Royals know how to use
So for a couple of minutes, I bump along the
For while it’s a bright, if blustery, day at
“Happy with that,” says Kev. it”.
damp grass, spin around, bump some more, look
Prestwick, there’s a storm raging amid the peaks
The Sea King spins around the valley once, First, very briefl y, it’s up and then it’s down.
up at the helicopter, think “that’s a long way up”,
and glens of Argyll.
twice, perhaps three times as the fl ight crew And once clear of the helicopter it’s a wonderfully
and scrape along the rock, buckling my legs.
At 2,000ft, the wind is gusting up to 50mph.
assess wind speed and direction. serene feeling – a bit like gliding or parachuting,
Clearly Kev realises he’s dealing with an idiot,
Thanks to the skill of the pilots, you don’t notice it
There’s no point winching in perfect conditions with all God’s wonders laid out before you: the
and fl icks the ‘up’ lever on the winch.
too much in the back of the cab.
off a nice, safe ledge. valley, the craggy mountain tops, the wisps of
It’s all been a rather serene experience. But then
But stare out of the side door and you’ll see
This is a training mission – the duty crew grass, the rather weather-beaten trees. Arrochar
it’s not been a matter of life and death. No bones
horizontal sleet shooting past. The winchman goes down fi rst to show how it’s nestles at the foot of the valley. broken. No hypothermia setting in. No fog or mist
The pilot’s not happy with the wind. Nor is done. Then it’s time for the real dope on a rope… But this is not a smooth ride. The winch lurches. shrouding the peaks.
LACMN Kev Regan. He fi res an orange fl are on Kev explains what is expected of me. Something It spins. One minute you’re facing the valley, the But like all they have rescued before, I’m grateful
to the mountainside around The Cobbler, a peak to do with rock, mountainside, and avoiding the next the mountainside. to plonk myself down on the fl oor of the Sea King.
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