Launch...

It is approaching late afternoon, and I am ambling along the surf line of the beach near Boscombe, Dorset, taking photographs and wondering why the sands have been raked smooth. This usually happens early in the morning during the holiday season, so as to prepare the area for a day of leisure (or sport), but the tourists and day trippers departed some weeks ago.

I make a number of photographs using the furrows created by the tractor-drawn rakes as lead-in lines to the local pier head, but I am suddenly aware of several inflatable lifeboats being launched into the sea, and then bouncing around in the autumn surf. The area comes under the watchful eye(s) of the RNLI during the summer months due to the area's popularity with surfers, but I have never known rescue boats to be stationed anywhere along the coast of Poole Bay.

It turns out that this coming weekend athletes will come from all over Europe to compete in lifesaving watersports, that will test the skills used by volunteer lifeguards. There will also be competing teams of Inshore Rescue Boats, from New Zealand, Denmark, Germany and Poland. Presumably my image captures one such team putting in a sneaky spot of pre-match practice (or "testing" as they might describe it). Tomorrow's weather forecast is very good, so I may well amble back for some shots of the action.


70-200mm f/2.8D Apo Sigma lens. 1/6400 second at f/5.6. ISO 400


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