We just concluded an amazing Summer School 2024.

Are you curious about 2025? Let us keep you informed.

Atlantic Pacific Summer School

A highly intensive residential course uniquely designed for humanitarians, especially those working in or interested in Search and Rescue. We aim to train people who will volunteer in the immediate to medium-term future, whether in the Mediterranean or other humanitarian drowning crises worldwide. We also accept applications from positive individuals who support our cause, who may not yet have volunteering plans.

Despite a two-year interruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so far we have trained over 200 people in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 & 2024.

Overview

Location: UWC Atlantic College, South Wales, UK
Dates: June or July 2025 (TBD)
Duration: 10 nights, 9 days
What’s included: accommodation, breakfast, lunch and dinner, all equipment and professional protective equipment
Size of course: 30-35 participants
Age: 18+ only
Cost: £1500*

*Scholarships available, see Costs section below

Like all our training programmes, the Summer School is designed with a rigorous combination of real-world experience and infrastructure from recognised institutions like the RNLI, IMRF, and the HSE.

The course is dually focused on Casualty Care or first aid training and maritime Search and Rescue. The two components involve theoretical and practical elements and both involve land-based and sea-based activities.

The SAR component is based on the IMRF Rescue Boat Operative guidelines, while both components have been further developed by our crew’s extensive experience in the SAR world, especially in Lesvos and the Central Mediterranean, but also in various national volunteer water rescue service organisations.

Training at Summer School

Casualty Care

Developed specifically for maritime search and rescue, the Casualty Care component of the course is universally applicable to all situations where you could use First Aid training in daily life, but it also equips humanitarians to care for casualties in rescue scenarios at sea.

It includes psychological first aid training, a critical element of care for potentially traumatised casualties, and equally important for humanitarians doing psychologically demanding work.

Unlike most first aid courses, it uses an aide-memoire check card system, which massively reduces stress and does not rely on memory during high-pressure situations. The check card system also allows the course material to be more advanced, leaving participants equipped to treat more illnesses and injuries, including those potentially encountered at sea with limited resources.

Successful completion will result in a certification that is valid for 3 years and which meets the criteria set by the HSE for First Aid at Work.

Search & Rescue

The course is ideally located on the Bristol Channel, offering our participants the chance to safely learn on a challenging body of water. Among other things, participants will:

Perfect their deck work and learn the crew skills required for SAR;
Increase their confidence with close-quarter manoeuvring;
Learn approaches;
Learn holding off & coming alongside safely;
Learn how to perform search patterns;
Learn safe casualty recovery and how to treat them once they are on board;
Learn person overboard;
Learn to tow casualty vessels safely;
Learn how to perform basic maintenance on the vessel;
Gain confidence in incredibly important soft skills such as: leadership and teamwork, personal and crew well-being, communication.

Participation by application only

Unlike our other courses, the summer school is by application only and priority is given to people who are already or who plan on volunteering in humanitarian SAR fields. We always receive far more amazing applications than we can accommodate on the course.

Apply early, and if not successful, please try again the following year! Get in touch with us with any questions.

Applications for 2025 will open in Spring 2025, but please contact us at any time of year with inquiries!

Costs & Transparency

This multi-day course is expensive for AP to run. Though we always try to keep costs low, we are reliant on donations and funding from external organisations to support this course. Fully costed, this course is £2200 per person. However, thanks to the generous time that our instructors give for free, we are able to reduce this cost to £1500 per person.

Despite this reduction, we know that the cost can still be a barrier to participation for many, especially as most of our participants are volunteers themselves. We want to be as inclusive as possible and to support humanitarians doing life-saving work.

We have several scholarships which range from free of charge to 40% discounts to apply for. Information on these are released with the yearly application form, but feel free to be in touch if you have any questions.

If we could, we would offer this course for free to everyone. As it stands, all profits we make from this and other courses, merch sales, and donations, get cycled back into making SAR training accessible. If you are able to pay for the course in full, know that your purchase makes attendance possible for others.

The scholarships listed here were avilable in 2024 and many will be available in 2025. Updates to follow!

Scholarships

Sam Lipman Scholarship

Supported by a generous funder, there was 1 full scholarship available for the 2024 Summer School.

Selection Criteria:

The Sam Lipman Scholarship is available to those who want to diversify their emergency or rescue skillset into search and rescue at sea. If you are currently volunteering or working for any emergency organisation, ranging from animal rescue like Sam and her work with the The British Divers Marine Life Rescue or perhaps a land-based rescue organisation like SARAID / SERVE ON / REACT, we welcome your application.

Sam with The British Divers Marine Life Rescue assisting with a stranded dolphin.

About Sam:

In 2019, Sam Lipman joined the AP Summer School to develop her skills in search and rescue in order to help in the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. With her usual focus and drive, she quickly got a place as crew on board a rescue vessel for a new project in the Central Mediterranean. This mission was fraught with risk, as everything was being done for the first time, in heavy seas, with a hostile presence nearby. Sam’s emergency service background, communication skills, calmness under pressure and resilience were all crucial factors in making it a success, and helping those in danger.

Sam had an endless amount of personal, academic and organisational accomplishments and dedicated her life to making a difference to both animals and humans alike. Her biggest passion lie with the Orca and there was nothing she loved more than being in the water. She was present at every whale rescue she could physically get to across the country (and even when she couldn't be there because of other commitments, it was all she spoke about until the rescue was complete!) A highly valued member of The British Divers Marine Life Rescue for over a decade, a Thames Area Coordinator since 2018, and about to complete her Masters thesis in Cetecean welfare, there is nothing Sam did not give but her whole heart to what she loved. She was the founder of Orca Aware - www.orcaaware.org - a foundation she created to raise awareness and document research into Orca whales around the world.

On top of that, Sam was an amazing Paramedic. A much loved colleague of London Ambulance Service EOC previously and in recent years on the frontline as part of the Ashford Make Ready team in Kent. She also embarked upon a 9 month secondment and became part of the local SECAmb Welfare team, following on from her 3rd year dissertation on staff well-being being published in the Journal of Paramedic Practice. She had recently completed her training with the Coastguard in order to volunteer there too. This is just a short list of the many things in which she participated in and put her passionate nature to such memorable use.

Although Sam was most well-known for her dedication to animal welfare, those of us who trained and crewed alongside her for humanitarian SAR recognise that she made a made a real, lasting contribution to our world as well, that she shall be missed, and that we stand in solidarity alongside anyone who has been bereaved by her loss.

Rosie and Sian, both supported to attend Summer School by the Reardon Smith Nautical Trust.

Reardon Smith Nautical Trust Scholarship

Atlantic Pacific have been honoured to be supported by the Reardon Smith Nautical Trust for the last 6 years. There are 5 full scholarships available for this years’ summer school generously supported by the trust.

The object of the trust is the advancement of education of young persons up to the age of 25, resident in Wales and Devon, in particular those resident in the City of Cardiff, including, but so as not to limit the foregoing, by payment of grants, scholarships, exhibitions and bursaries to individuals to attend recognised or maritime courses relating to shipping, maritime law and commerce.

Selection Criteria:

In order to apply for one of the 5 scholarships you must be under 25 (by the end date of the course) and live in Wales.

For more information about the Reardon Smith Nautical Trust, please visit https://www.rsnt.org.uk/

The Nick Kinsley Scholarship

The Nick Kinsley Scholarship will fund the essential maritime rescue training for new volunteer crew members. Priority will be given to under 25's who are starting our in their search and rescue career, who without this bursary might not be able to otherwise fund this training.

This Scholarship is supported by Nick’s family and funded through the amazing commitment and hard work of Nick’s son, Tom. Over the last four years, Tom has been completing various running challenges all over the world to raise money for this AP Scholarship.

Selection Criteria:

In order to apply for the Nick Kinsley Scholarship you need to be starting out in and committed to a career in Search and Rescue. Priority will be given to under 25's who without this bursary could not attend this training.

AP Summer School 2023

A quick look at Summer School 2023, which ran from 19 - 29 June with 33 dedicated participants. Photos by Sarah Haberl, Anja Taubert.

AP Summer School 2022

Our first Summer School since the pandemic, here is a quick look at the 2022 course, which ran from 13 - 21 July with 35 dedicated participants. Photos by Sarah Haberl, Jez Booker.