The Dartmouth Yacht Club was packed for our second open meeting. Simon Pryce, Divisional Lifeboat Inspector, reviewed a very successful first year. "Results have shown that we have the right boat in the right place" he said. Launches in the South West have been as frequent this year as when the weather in the past had been far better and more people had been using the water. David Hannah, Regional Appeals Manager, congratulated and thanked everyone who had contributed towards the magnificent sum of £302,900 for the Dart Lifeboat Appeal. Rob Clements, LOM, introduced the crew, who then briefly spoke about the shouts that they had been on. John Yunnie, SSO, now has four Sea Safety Advisers and can offer sea safety checks to anyone requesting them. They had a very successful Dartmouth regatta, both onshore and with the RNLI sea safety boat. John Fenton spoke about his role as Press Officer, producing this website, as well as keeping the press informed of our activities. The next newsletter it is due out in mid December. Claire Blight, Regional Fundraising Manager, thanked the fundraising team for all their hard work over the last three years. Some are retiring, including the chairman, Terry Knight. She explained that there was still a need for fundraising activities, all be it at a less frenetic level, to cover the operating costs of the station. Twenty one new people have offered to help with occasional fundraising activities and three have offered to join the committee, including an offer to take over the souvenir sales from Sandra Knight. We are still looking for a new chairman of the fundraising team and for someone with secretarial skills. Bob Hattersley described the local membership scheme which, for a small sum, will ensure that local members receive the Dart D Tales newsletter and news of launches and forthcoming events. Rear Admiral Robin Shiffner, chair of the LMT, again thanked everyone for their very hard work on behalf of the newest RNLI station in the West and drew the meeting to a close.

Peter Fleming, Mechanic on the Dart Operations team, carried out his monthly inspection of the boat this morning (9th May) and found that the starboard sponson was deflated. The boat has nine airtight chambers and it was hoped that it was simply a matter of a faulty valve. The Engineer from the Divisional Base at Saltash attended and established that changing the valve did not relieve the problem. He found that there was a hole in the sponson where a foreign body had wedged itself betwen the flooring and the inside of the sponson. The boat was put "off service" at 12:30 and D523 from the reserve fleet at Poole was prepared and driven to Dartmouth. The two Dart Mechanics and four of the lifeboat crew transferred all the equipment from the old boat to the new and Dart station was back on service at 21:35.

D523 was at Redcar on the Yorkshire coast from 1997 to 2007 when she was withdrawn to the reserve fleet. Our paramedic, Haydn Glanvill, was training on her only last week at Poole where he was on a weeks crew course.

Simon Pryce, Divisional Inspector from Saltash, declared that he was satisfied with the levels of training and competance of the Operations team, the Helmsmen, the Lifeboat crew and the Launch crew and that the Station was "fit for purpose". At 20:45 on the 25th October he telephoned the Marine Rescue centre in Brixham and placed the placed the RNLI Lifeboat at Dartmouth "on service" There will be a constant assessment of the Station by the RNLI Inspectors, initially every three months, before the station can be given full Operational status.

RNLI maroons to sounded in the River Dart today.

The RNLI fired two maroons over the River Dart as part of a crew training exercise. The emergency call out system is sometimes used to alert volunteer lifeboat crews, especially if a casualty is within hearing range. The maroons were fired during the early evening on Thursday 18 October as part of the on-going training for the volunteers who will run the new Dartmouth lifeboat station.

All RNLI crew and station volunteers wear pagers, which alert them to emergencies, but the traditional maroons are kept as a back up just in case, in a rare circumstance, the system fails. The two loud bangs are also useful in letting casualties know the lifeboat is on its way and are sometimes fired to warn other water users in busy harbours of the emergency.

Tom Mansell, RNLI Deputy Divisional Inspector, says it’s important that the new volunteers at Dartmouth know how to fire the maroons safely:

‘Maroons, like any explosive charge, must be handled and fired with great care. The RNLI has a special launching device, which the volunteers at Dartmouth will be practising with on Thursday. This doesn’t mean maroons will always be fired in Dartmouth when there’s an emergency call out for the lifeboat. We will still rely on pagers, but it will be up to our launching team to assess the situation and decide whether maroons are needed.’

‘Training for our new volunteer team at Dartmouth has been going extremely well. I must pay tribute to the team for all the hard work and dedication they have shown in the last few months as we’ve put them through their paces on the D class inshore lifeboat. I’m very proud of them all and know they will provide a valuable asset to the life-saving charity, the town and water users in and round the River Dart.’

The RNLI first established a lifeboat station in Dartmouth in 1878 when a lifeboat house was built on land used by the Dartmouth Boat Club. Raleigh Estates owned the site and the building cost £300. In 1879 a slipway was built at Sandquay at a cost of £61. The station closed in 1896 and the lifeboat house was sold for £100

A Dartmouth RNLI appeal was launched to raise the funds needed to set up the new station. The target is £205,000 and so far the total amount collected stands at £183,000. This is thanks to generous donations from fundraising events, individuals, charitable trusts, and local companies.

As a registered charity, the RNLI relies on voluntary contributions and legacies to ensure its volunteer crews have the very best lifeboats, equipment and training to help them save lives at sea.

The 24 enrolled crew members have been out training on the Dart most evenings until Regatta. Dartmouth is unusual and fortunate in that so many already have qualified marine experience. Fifteen have put their names forward as "prospective helmsmen" and before the station can be declared operational some 7 to 9 of them need to be assessed by the RNLI Divisional Inspectors and shown to be proficient. Training in mid September will concentrate on achieving this.

In the mean time the Mobile Training Unit from the Lifeboat College at Poole has been training 10 of the volunteers in First Aid, with a particular emphasis on situations as they will find it on the water. The importance of this was driven home when the lifeboat was called to assist in the rescue of a casualty with serious injuries who had fallen into the river from the Kingswear to Higher Ferry footpath. Although D520 had only arrived a few days before, she was called as there was a senior Training Officer on board.

South Hams District Councillors have today given their approval to a new RNLI lifeboat station in Dartmouth. It means the town and harbour could be served by a D class inshore lifeboat by the end of September this year.

The RNLI lifeboat will be stationed in a purpose built wooden building on the site of the condemned Pavilion at Coronation Park. The boathouse will contain the lifeboat, launching equipment, crew changing facilities, a toilet and an operations and training room, which will also double up as a meeting room.

Tom Mansell, RNLI Deputy Divisional Inspector, says he's delighted that the approval has been granted and the RNLI can go forward with its plans:

'This has been a long and I have to say, drawn out process but now we have the permission to proceed, that's all behind us. First I must pay tribute to all the Dartmouth RNLI volunteers and supporters who have remained loyal to the charity throughout the last few months and who are dedicated to setting up the station and ultimately saving lives at sea. They have shown incredible patience.'

'Demolition of the Pavilion will begin shortly. The ground will also be prepared and measurements taken for the new building. All work will then stop during the Dartmouth regatta, but straight after the event we will be erecting the boathouse.'

Rob Clements, Dartmouth RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager, says the D class inshore lifeboat will arrive shortly, but won't take up its operational role straight away:

'The inshore lifeboat will be stored locally and will be used in the first instance, for training up the volunteer crew so they are ready to carry out rescues. The plan is to have the lifeboat operational by October when a full programme of crew training has been completed. I, and the crew volunteers, are delighted that we have finally reached a point where we can plan for the arrival of the towns first lifeboat since 1896.'

The Open Meeting and Petition

An excellent Open Meeting was held at the Dartmouth Guildhall on May 21st and was attended by over one hundred and seventy people. Tom Mansell, Deputy Divisional Inspector, gave a lucid and informative presentation of the RNLI's plans for Dartmouth and then invited questions from the floor. Hopefully some of the anxieties, voiced by a few of those present, were allayed by the answers.
It was decided that it was time for the "silent majority" to be given the chance to show their support. Three thousand and sixty eight signatures were obtained from people locally over three days, requesting the SHDC to approve, without further delay, the application for a wooden RNLI lifeboat station on Coronation Park.

Signing the Petition

The twenty five enrolled crew tried on their dry suits and helmets for the first time in the safety of a local swimming pool. They were also trained in the use of day and night flares before embarking, the next day, on their basic sea survival training.
This took place on the Dart and involved the crew, in groups of three, capsizing and re-righting the "capsize boat" before restarting the 40HP petrol engine.
The launch crew, DLA's and members of the local fundraising team were given the opportunity to witness this from the safety boat and on the last tight the exercise was recorded for South Hams Radio.

Over She Comes	Restarting the Engine

The search for a suitable site for the station began in August 2004. Eleven positions, both on land and on the water, were investigated. Detailed plans and costs were produced for two different sites on MOD land, but permission to use these areas was then withdrawn.

Coronation Park had always been the RNLI's preferred choice for the lifeboat station due to its proximity to the only practical launching slip. The Tennis Pavilion had been vacated by its previous tenants and subsequently was condemned as unsafe, both structurally and electrically.

The RNLI drew up plans to repair and refurbish the building, but, following further discussions with the South Hams District Council, it was decided to place a purpose built wooden building on the cleared site.

The station will house a D class inshore lifeboat, launching equipment, crew changing facilities, a toilet, and an operations/training room/fund raisers meeting room.

Agreement on the rent and lease has been finalised with the District Council, and, subject to planning, at last the RNLI has an agreed way forward.

Tom Mansell, the RNLI Deputy Divisional Inspector, says he's delighted. 'This will be a major step forward for the Dartmouth Lifeboat Station, giving a vital boost to the volunteer crew members who have been waiting so long for this project to come to fruition. We very much hope to have a fully functioning lifeboat station here by the summer'

Rob Clements, the Dartmouth RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager will be running the Station, 'Projects in Dartmouth tend to have a long gestation period. Many began to doubt that a suitable site would ever be found. The local teams would welcome anyone who has been holding back, waiting for this day'

If you can help in any way please look at the local RNLI web site on www.dartmouth-lifeboat.org.uk or contact Rob Clements, RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager on 832926, John Fenton, Administrator and Lifeboat Press Officer on 770761 or Terry Knight, Chair of the local RNLI Fund raising team on 834933.

Hallsands disaster memories boost Dartmouth RNLI appeal fund.

The royalties from a poignant book about the horrific Hallsands disaster in 1917 are being presented to the appeal for an RNLI lifeboat station in Dartmouth. Sisters Against the Sea tells the story of four sisters whose family home was washed away during the incident in the south Devon fishing village. Now the authors, Ruth and Frank Milton from Buckfastleigh, are donating £1000 to the RNLI to help set up a new lifeboat station in Dartmouth.

It is now exactly 90 years since the fishing village of Hallsands on the South Devon coast finally surrendered to the sea in January 1917. This tragedy for the people of Hallsands followed years of petitioning the Government over the denuding of their foreshore when, between 1897 and 1902, thousands of tons of shingle were dredged and then shipped to Plymouth for the building of an extension to the dockyard, thus robbing the village of its sea defences. One of the families who lost everything was the Trout family and the book tells the story of the four Trout sisters.

Ruth and Frank Milton, who wrote Sisters Against the Sea, wanted to pay tribute to those kind people, many now deceased, who contributed information for the book and to thank those who have since purchased copies. Ruth explained:

'It was second nature for Ella and Patience to go to help those in peril on the sea. Ella was awarded the OBE for one heroic rescue in 1917 and the two sisters were known as The Guardians of the Bay. We hope that the royalties from Sisters against the Sea will help in some small way to enable others to continue their good deeds'.

Ironically the Grandfather of the man who will run the Dartmouth RNLI lifeboat station, Rob Clements, was a member of the Hallsands fishing community and had to move to Dartmouth when the sea wrecked the village and removed the foreshore.

Rob Clements, the volunteer RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager for Dartmouth says:

'I am so pleased to accept this generous donation from Mr. & Mrs Milton, which is especially poignant as it comes from a family with such close links to the seafaring community of Start Bay'.

Sisters Against the Sea, by Frank and Ruth Milton, is published by Halsgrove and is available from good bookshops price £19.99.
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Nigel Crang, helmsman of the Torbay D class inshore lifeboat is interviewed for Spotlight after the Sandquay site was withdrawn. A turning point in our search for a Lifeboat station for Dartmouth?

Dartmouth Harbour is a busy yachting centre with over three thousand berths. As well as a fishing and naval port, it is also regularly visited by cruise liners. Statistics indicate that over one million people use the River Dart each year.

Today with the above busy activity it is inevitable that there will be incidents in and around the harbour limits. RNLI information indicates that lifeboats from Torbay and Salcombe have been called to the River Dart and the surrounding areas on 70 occasions in 2004 and 2005 and rescued 112 people.

The entrance to the River Dart is 13 miles to the east of Salcombe and 10 miles to the west of Torbay. Even with the faster all-weather boat (ALB) at Torbay and the Atlantic 75 at Salcombe, there is at least a 30-minute delay between the first information being received and a lifeboat arriving at the mouth of the River Dart. Many of the incidents recorded by Brixham Coastguard relate to people in the water, injury, illness and grounding. In those cases the time needed to reach the casualty could well be too long.

Due to the rapid rise in traffic on the River Dart and in the Dart estuary and the increasing number of incidents that need an immediate response it has been decided to re-establish a Lifeboat Station at Dartmouth. A Lifeboat Operations Manager (LOM), Crew of 16 and an Operations Team will man the Station. They will use a D class inshore boat and associated equipment to respond to incidents. Discussions are taking place with South Hams District Council to find a suitable site for the boathouse as permission to use the intended Sandquay site was withdrawn by the Defence Land Agents.

A letter from Dartmouth's RNLI Press Officer, Dr. John Fenton.
"If it isn't reported it didn't happen." This was one of the many lessons I was taught over a three day course at the excellent new RNLI College at Poole.
The seven of us, all new and inexperienced LPO's, were taken on the first evening to the BBC studios in Southampton. There we watched the professionals as they produced and screened their evening local news programme.
We returned to the College for the rest of the course. We covered the essentials of researching and producing a Press release and were taught what to expect in a radio or filmed interview as well as all about the resources that the RNLI has to back us up.
We each were then interviewed and videoed, facing a fairly hostile presenter, covering a range of different scenarios. I survived and even managed to include my three key points, "RNLI", "Charity" and "Volunteer"
I cannot wait to get past this initial stage and to start reporting on the crews, the training and the call outs.
I'm ready with my pad and camera! John Fenton.

Dartmouth RNLI Fundraising Branch
We are just over £96,000 towards our Dartmouth Lifeboat Station Appeal target of £205,000, which was launched on 1st August 2006. This has been achieved as a result of a mail shot of appeal letters to 17,700 existing RNLI members, local third party events, and events raised by the Branch itself.
Third Party Events have included:
Garden Openings, Coffee Mornings, Kingswear & Dittisham Regattas, Torcross Beach Rock Event, Dart Gallery Original Painting Raffle, Kingswear Arm & Thigh Wrestling Competition and Tapper's Travel Lunch aboard the Cruise Liner, the Seven Seas Voyager as she visited Dartmouth.
Branch Events have included for example:
Souvenir Sales at various times in the town, Sir Bedivere Experience during Regatta and the Trafalgar Night Dinner at the Royal Castle Hotel.
Next event
The Friends of Bayards carol service on the 22nd Dec at 6:30. Part collection to RNLI

If you can help the local team in anyway by joining them, running a fundraising event, or identifying people, Charitable Trusts, or businesses who may assist us, please call our local Chairman Terry Knight on 01803 834933, or email him at tar.knight@virgin.net

An RNLI Coast Review team visited Dartmouth on Wednesday18th. October
Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, Chairman of the Operations Committee, said, "We can reaffirm that, in operational terms, there is a clear case to improve lifeboat coverage in the Dart estuary". "Discussions are ongoing with the South Hams District Council, including the planners, and a potential site has been identified from which trials of an inshore lifeboat can be conducted, hopefully in the Spring of 2007"

Communications
To keep up with local RNLI news
Look at the new RNLI notice board on the corner of Market Street and Newport Street in Dartmouth.
Log in to our web site on dartmouth-lifeboat.org.uk

Lifeboat Operations Manager Rob Clements 01803 832926
Administration and Press officer John Fenton 01803 770761
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The RNLI are appealing for help to find a suitable site for their planned Dartmouth lifeboat station.  A number of proposals have failed to secure a home for the new inshore lifeboat, and now the charity says it desperately needs help from the community. The appeal comes just a week after both the Torbay lifeboats had to race around to the port when two boats collided on the River Dart.

The RNLI first agreed to establish a D class inshore lifeboat at Dartmouth two years ago but since then the lifesaving charity has faced a major obstacle in finding a suitable site for the lifeboat to be housed and launched from. Several proposals have been investigated but have fallen through, and now the RNLI say they've exhausted all the options open to them and need fresh ideas.  Simon Pryce is the RNLI Divisional Inspector:

'A week ago two vessels collided on the River Dart and three people were injured.  Both the Torbay all weather and inshore lifeboats were launched and did a superb job, but a Dartmouth lifeboat would have been on scene at least half an hour quicker.

Torbay's volunteer crews were vital in providing first aid assistance, and a Dartmouth crew would be trained to the same very high standard by the RNLI.'

'It's extremely frustrating to know that if we had had more success in securing a home for the new lifeboat, Dartmouth lifeboat volunteers would have been able to play a vital and speedy role in this appalling incident.  We have the management team in place that would run the station, and a list of potential crew volunteers, so all we need now is a home and I appeal to the people of Dartmouth to help us find a site so we can get on with the job of saving lives at sea, in and around the River Dart.'

The RNLI remains committed to setting up the Dartmouth lifeboat station and to this end an appeal is to be launched to raise the money needed to provide the facility.  On Friday (4 August) a special letter is being mailed out to 17,000 people in the South West asking them to consider providing financial support.