Reptilian nights...

The reptiles...one word...awesome!

Distressed damsels...

So the raft race is about to start and the damsels in distress have arrived...what a motley bunch they look (except of course the coxswains wife who looks gorgeous as ever!)

Build a boat!

The ever popular build a boat competition is underway. A dozen our so teams are pitting their woodworking skills against time and a scarcity of materials to build the ultimate 'one sheet boat'. Good luck one and all!

Here we go again...

Another Lifeboat week and the first of out bands 'wasted generation'...going down very well too!

A tight ship...

With one hand on the Tiller, Marcel has everything within reach, exercising with him on his yacht tonight, I was hugely impressed by the level of thought that had gone into creating a practical single-hander.

A lovely Purbeck evening...

Thanks to Marcel for coming out to play with us tonight...a very productive evening spent towing his lovely yacht.

A lovely Purbeck evening...

Thanks to Marcel for coming out to play with us tonight...a very productive evening spent towing his lovely yacht.

Helping out the neighbours...

A quick ILB shout this morning to assist our neighbours, the sailing club, with a few capsized dinghies on Pevril ledge. A quick job, but a good one.

Good old fashioned salvage...

Nothing much changes in the world of ships and shipping. No sooner has a wreck washed up than the scavenging begins...and it's a sad end really for what must once have been a fine looking boat.

Waiting for the boat to come home...

So the boat has been delayed on it's exercise looking for the wrecked hull of a yacht which has been drifting along the Dorset coast for the best part of a week.

This has now been found and brought under tow into safety. Well done boys...

Meanwhile, back in the Boathouse, the boys wait patiently with all the gear ready for the boat to return.

Practice makes perfect...

So, while both boats are away at sea, those remaining behind work through a variety of training scenarios. Tonight this includes a fair amount of practise with the heaving line (trying to hit a bucket). Well done to Roydon who is the only one to manage so far!

Smile...

Every once in a while we have a photograph taken of the crew. Boathouses around the country are full of this sort of thing...mostly sepia toned photographs of men in flat caps and wooly jumpers from the days when men were men and lifeboats had oars.



Today we had a new one taken as there have been many changes to the crew since our last one. Paul(Shilo), one of our resident photographers, generally takes ours and, while he is a great photographer (and excellent gardener), he finds herding lifeboat crew a challenge!



However, despite the freezing cold wind, in a pretty short space of time, he had us licked into some sort of shape and the deed was done. Hopefully it will come out well and, in years to come, we will look back at it and reflect on the crew we were in and the experiences shared.



Incidentally, somewhere in the back row is hidden Gav's lovely young son Harry. We didn't know where else to put him while Kim was pulling the trigger on the camera, so, we hid him behind one or two of the larger crew (I won't mention who!)

All good...