Fundraising success at Lifeboat Day 2014
A bright and breezy Lifeboat Day was opened by crime writer Ann Cleeves, author of the Vera Stanhope novels. Ann signed copies of her latest book Harbour Street and gave a percentage of each book sold on the day to Amble RNLI.
Organisers were delighted with the event, which raised £10,000 for the Amble Lifeboats. Two rescue demonstrations took place during the day; sadly the RAF Sea King was unable to attend, due to being called out earlier in the day.
| Amble Lifeboat Fundraisers’ ReportWith the weather on our side Lifeboat Day was a splendid day all round, though not without its minor problems! Unfortunately the Steel Band had to cancel at the last minute, due to illness and the Sea King helicopter was unable to join the scheduled exercise with the lifeboats, as it was required on an emergency search and rescue call. We were fortunate that the exercise had been completed before the Amble lifeboats were themselves called out.Nevertheless, everyone appeared to enjoy themselves. There was a great selection of stalls, with games for the children. The refreshments were, as ever, excellent – all home-made cakes, scones sandwiches etc – it was non-stop upstairs the whole day. The motor cycles/ trikes were very popular, giving rides and having photographs taken. Stormy Stan visited us, too – the children thought he was great (I suspect some adults quite enjoyed a cuddle!).
Overall the day went extremely well and the amount raised up to the present is £10,000 – a fantastic result. A huge thank you to everyone who came along to support us and this was a tremendous start to our Appeal to raise £200,000 for the new ‘Shannon’ Lifeboat, due on station in 2017 |
Lifeboat crew scrambled
Just as everyone had packed up for the day, the pagers went off and the crew of both lifeboats were called out to help a small yacht with engine failure just outside the harbour.
“Just as were finishing – around 5pm – the crews suddenly left everything and ran for the boats. Someone was in distress outside the harbour. I ended up shooting’ an actual ‘shout’. Well done lads,” said Bartle Rippon, Lifeboat Day volunteer and Ambler photographer.
A child from the yacht was placed on the All Weather Lifeboat and the Inshore Lifeboat towed the yacht safely back to Amble.
