So Mart asked...

What made you want to become involved with the lifeboat, and how did you become involved. Were you always boat crew, or did you start helping in other ways?

Well, the answer to the first question is in this picture really. I was brought up in a small fishing village in Yorkshire called Runswick bay. The village was a lifeboat village and all of us young lads were in awe of the boat and it's crew. Of course things change and at 4 a.m. on 1st July, 1978, we stood on the beach and watched the lifeboat put to sea for the last time. After 112 years service to fishermen, sailors and holidaymakers, the lifeboat era had come to an end. So for most of my childhood I remember the boathouse being used by the ex mechanic of the lifeboat, Bill Cole, as his fishing shed where he stored his boat Patricia and his David Brown tractor. However, I still wanted to be a lifeboatman and couldn't pass the boathouse without catching a wiff of its intoxicating smell and dreaming of what it would be like to put to sea on a stormy night in a lifeboat.

In due course the villagers decided that a local rescue facility was needed for the summer months and so the Runswick Bay Rescue Boat was born. This small rib was, and is still, housed in the old tractor shed adjacent to the old Lifeboat house. Amongst others, my father crewed this boat in the early days when home from sea, and indeed I too spent some time on the crew as a youngster. This came to an end however when I left home to go to sea.

And so, when I arrive in Swanage in 1999, it seemed obvious that I should show my face in the boathouse and see if it might be possible to join the crew. Luckily both Bonz (then Mechanic) and Chris Haw (then Cox'n) seemed to think that this was a reasonable proposition and the rest as they say...