Preparing for Summer

With the weather beginning to warm up, St Helens Marine Rescue is gearing up for the summer boating season. The photo shows RV Freycinet crossing the barway in beautiful calm weather. We are putting tracks on the recently installed Garmin 12" and 8" touch-screen chartplotters, a great set-up with the pilot’s chartplotter integrated into the fly-bridge. These units are a delight to use and enhances the capabilities of our offshore rescue vessel.

The RV Freycinet was recently slipped and routine maintenance performed and the Break O’Day has been serviced. We are hopeful that a current grant application to the Tasmania Community Fund will be succesfull, allowing us to replace the Break O’Day’s 90HP Evinrude outboard motors. These motors have been fantastic, never letting us down over 353 jobs and 740 hours and have given our crews the confidence to operate on the barway in large breaking swells.

The St Helens Barway is in good condition, with the exception of heavy weather of course. We still have issues with shoal water at Pelican Point channel inside the bay and vessels of a larger draft need to talk to us before attempting to enter. The boating community are waiting for Marine and Safety Tasmania to do further work on this ongoing nuisance.