MANNED by volunteers, the Severn Area Rescue Association helps the emergency services rescue people across the Severn Estuary.

DAVID DEANS ventured on one of its training exercises to find out more about the organisation THE last time I was out on water was six months ago.

It was Kerala in India, I was on a ferry, and we were doing around ten miles an hour.

So there was little to prepare me for zipping across the Severn Estuary with Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) at 35 knots.

SARA 1 bashed along the river as we headed out for a training mission at the bottom of the Wye river in Chepstow, with the wind practically blinding me until I realised what the wind-guard on my helmet was for.

As I held on to dear life I turned to my colleague sat to the right of me and asked: “How fast is this going?”

Ian Blainey, who used to work as a race engineer on a speedboat team in Dubai, looked up at me unflustered.

“Not that fast,” he smiled back.

I am not what you would call a boat person and it doesn’t help that I can’t swim, so I’m probably not the best person you’d send to rescue someone stricken in the Usk or the Wye.

But my evening out on training with SARA – the second largest lifeboat group in the UK made me realise how extraordinary this organisation is.

SARA provides lifeboat, land rescue, swiftwater rescue and flooding support services across the Severn Estuary and the surrounding area including the rivers Usk and Wye, as well as the Monnow, Avon and Severn rivers.

Volunteers save lives, and recover bodies – it has recovered around seven this year alone.

Despite its vital role, apart from the odd grant, the organisation receives little in government support, but each station costs £25,000 a year to run.

It needs to raise £100,000 a year to keep its four stations going.

The organisation has stations at Beachley, Sharpness, Tewkesbury and Wyre Forest.

It is set to celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.

The first challenge, before we even stepped out on the boat, was to don my attire for the evening, a dry suit, worn by every member of crew.

This is a giant rubber person container that you must somehow climb into before you force your head through a small tight hole.

You then hold open the neck, kneel and force all the air out.

It is like being vacuumpacked ready for sale at a supermarket deli, but this, and a lifejacket, will keep me safe if something untoward happened.

It will also keep you very, very dry.

After some initial safety words from Mervyn Fleming, SARA’s area commander west, I sat at the back of SARA 1, a fast rigid inflatable rescue boat, with a top speed of 43 to 44 mph.

We sped to the bottom of the Wye where we met Chris Taylor, a SARA cox who was tonight’s stunt casualty, of a kind.

He is a volunteer with the service, and he volunteered his boat to be rescued by the crews.

The crews performed two types of tow to bring the boat back to a mooring - a long tow and a tow that attaches the boat bow-to-bow and stern-tostern.

With the second tow, the boat was eased gently back to a mooring in Chepstow.

The exercise showed how the group may help a boat that has lost power or is in trouble - and stop them from being pulled out into the estuary by the tide.

As well as the three crew members on SARA 1 a team of trainees on SARA 3, a boat purchased with the help of readers of Argus sister paper the Free Press, took part in the exercise.

Laura McCartney, 32, from Ross-on-Wye, works in outdoor education, and has been training with SARA for almost half a year together with her partner Martin Sweeney.

“Through my work I had all these rescue skills. I wanted to make a difference really,” she said.

“I’ve found the training really good. I thought I knew a lot before I got here, I really didn’t.

The amount of stuff that goes into it is really eye-opening.”

Mr Carwardine, who runs his own firm and who piloted my boat, says he has been interested in the outdoors “forever really”.

He said he was in awe from the first day he arrived at SARA.

“There’s a lot involved in being a crew member at SARA,” he said.

“Everyone is expected in a brief period of time to become proficient in all the skills of a mountain rescue team, and all the skills of a inshore lifeboat and swiftwater rescue (team).”

Mr Fleming told the Argus that the organisation, which was established 40 years ago next year, had started out as just a lifeboat organisation.

“Everyone does everything,”

he said.

“We don’t have some people that are boat and some people that are land.

“It makes SARA unique as we do all of it.”

SARA’s fundraising drive continues this weekend with a duck race from Chepstow Bridge on Sunday from 11.30am.

Meanwhile on Saturday and Sunday 220 people will head down a zip wire at the National Diving Centre in Tutshill.

It’s hoped the two events will raise in excess of £20,000 for the cause.

For more information contact Dave Thompson on 0772 5744636 or visit Sara-rescue.org.uk