A search and rescue exercise in Łeba. Crews from France, Finland, Estonia, Iceland and Norway on the Baltic

One item on the programme was an exercise in Łeba on the Polish Baltic coast, run on Sunday by the local coastal rescue station.

Searching with three units at once

The crews put to sea in two rescue boats, R-10 and R-15, and on the rescue watercraft R-9, working alongside the rescue vessel Monsun. The scenario was a simulated search: volunteers, together with one of the station's rescuers, were left in the water and then searched for.

The casualties were recovered both onto Monsun and onto the RIBs. That is the key part of the drill, because lifting a person from the water looks entirely different from the low freeboard of an inflatable and from the deck of a rescue vessel, where the casualty has to be raised several metres. Practising both in a single sortie answers the question of which unit to send to a given incident.

Two models of rescue at the same quay

The value of such an exchange comes from the difference between systems. Polish maritime rescue is a state service with professional crews on salaried posts, rescue vessels and coastal stations. Most organisations in the IMRF work differently and rely on volunteers: France's SNSM, the Finnish and Norwegian rescue societies and Iceland's ICE-SAR are structures whose crews hold other jobs day to day.

That produces different solutions in rostering, training, communications and equipment. Volunteer organisations have to account for the time it takes to muster a crew, but they maintain a dense network of small stations and strong local backing. A professional service offers constant readiness but is inevitably smaller in numbers. An exchange between these models teaches more than training among similar services.

There is a practical dimension too. Operations on the Baltic are run jointly, and coordination between national rescue coordination centres requires compatible procedures. A rescuer who has already sailed on a partner's unit knows what their equipment looks like, how their communications work and what to expect from them during a joint operation at sea.

Łeba after a demanding season

The exercise took place at a station that has had a hard summer. In August the Łeba crews, together with Monsun, ran a multi-day operation on a motor yacht aground about four nautical miles east of the port. Four people and a dog were on board, the vessel began taking on water and part of the crew was evacuated onto a rescue boat. Refloating the yacht took two days, with the rescue vessel Orkan from Ustka and excavator operators involved, as the weather deteriorated.

That is why search scenarios are practised. A person in the water in the Baltic in late summer has a survival window measured in hours, and in early spring or autumn in tens of minutes. Speed of recovery is the single most important parameter of the whole operation.

Changing equipment

The exchange comes as the Polish service renews its fleet. In 2025 it signed a contract with the Finnish yard Kewatec AluBoat for six new rescue units, provisionally designated SAR 2000, while further vessels, Mistral and Powiew, are under construction in a project co-financed by the EU transport projects centre CUPT.

New equipment changes the way crews work, and at such a moment the experience of partners whose countries have operated similar units for years is worth more than a manufacturer's catalogue.