Retirement

HM Coastguard Kilchoan is one of hundreds of Coastguard teams scattered around the shores of the United Kingdom. Team members are volunteers who are paid for the hours they put into training, and for time spent on 'call outs'. The organisation itself is a government department within the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, and it is staffed by a full time employee at Sector level - so Kilchoan's sector, including Fort William, Mallaig, Lochaline and the small isles, is run by a Sector Officer based in Fort William.

Over the years I have been a member of the Kilchoan team, we have attended a huge range of different emergencies, from sunken boats to kayakers in distress, from people lost or injured to shore-line searches for missing persons. The team is called out by pager, and this can happen at any time of day or night and in every sort of weather. Call outs have lasted from a few hours to several days.

Kilchoan is a Cliff Rescue Team, trained to use ropes to descend to and rescue casualties at the bottom of cliffs - a skill which, thankfully, we have only had to use once in anger, to rescue a small terrier which had fallen over a cliff and got himself caught on a narrow ledge.

There was a time when organisations such as the Coastguard had an upper age limit: no more, so my retirement at the end of May came for my own reasons - mainly, that my age was beginning to compromise my usefulness to the team, and there is always a time when it is right and proper to move on. I leave with great sadness, because it has been a privilege to work with this small group of very dedicated people who risk a great deal to give a service to people in distress. The tasks a Coastguard undertakes require total trust in every other member of the team. A good team is therefore a happy, confident and caring team. Kilchoan is all these and much, much more. A good team is a well-led and well-supported team. Kilchoan has the great good fortune to have true leaders in Station Officer Hughie MacLachlan, Deputy SO Rosie Curtis, and Sector Officer Phil Wren. But Kilchoan Coastguard's greatest asset is its team members.

I wish the team well in the future, and thank them for being so very good to me during the fourteen happy and fulfilling years I spent working with them.