One of the Best Beaches in Sussex …

Mar 3, 2022

It’s well recognised locally that since lockdown, beaches all along the local coastline have become busier as ‘staycations’ have gained in popularity.

dry january fundraiser, PLIRB
And our own Pett Level is starting to be officially noted in lists of lovely places, and it has been declared one of the best beaches in Sussex in this recent article in the Sussex Express .

Yes, taking a bow at #3 in the list as the screenshot below shows …
one of the best beaches in Sussex, Pett Level beach
So now the word is out there, we’re already preparing for what may well be a busy season along Pett Level and Rye Bay! Because it may be one of the best beaches in Sussex, but it’s not without its risks and hazards.

Which is why you’ll find our teams of volunteers regularly training. Since last year’s extremely busy ‘unlocked’ summer, we’ve maintained our twice-weekly training sessions to help our volunteers to stay #rescueready as the seasons progress.

Regular training as a team means we can prepare and practice across a range of rescue scenarios, beach problem possibilities and likely first aid needs, in all types of weather and light conditions.

It also means we can plan ahead in terms of beach awareness education and raising awareness of hazards on local beaches and drowning prevention.

If you’d like to volunteer – and train – with us, please message us or phone our boathouse to find out more! 👍

IT COSTS MORE THAN £10k A YEAR TO KEEP OUR RESCUE BOAT CHARITY AFLOAT

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US

Dry January Fundraiser

Mar 2, 2022

A huge congratulations to members of our crew Martin Geldart and Nick Wise, plus long-time PLIRB supporter Dawn Turner.

dry january fundraiser, PLIRB

Between them, this amazing trio took part in a Dry January fundraiser and raised an incredible £1200 for our charity.

This money will go towards much needed new dry suits for the crew, plus a little left over for some of the other essential equipment needed to keep us #rescueready! 

 This isn’t the first personal challenge amongst our supporters and crew which have raised vital funds for us. Who can forget the crazy beard growing of crew members in lockdown, or the epic cycle ride of Sean O’Sullivan when our community fundraising was closed during the pandemic.

If you have the time and the idea for a personal challenge which could support us – from a Dry January fundraiser, right through to a Christmas challenge in December – we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us.

IT COSTS MORE THAN £10k A YEAR TO KEEP OUR RESCUE BOAT CHARITY AFLOAT

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US

Beach Safety Update

Mar 1, 2022

Please take a moment to read our essential beach safety reminder for local beach users. Our local Cliff End beach at Pett Level is notorious for rock falls and, after the recent storms, the current risk of rock falls is much greater.

beach safety signage, Cliff End
Please be aware that rock falls can happen at any time and can affect you whether you’re at the cliff top, or the cliff bottom.
To minimise personal risk:
  • Please stay away from the cliff edge at the top.
  • Do not walk or sit under the cliff line.
  • Do not try to climb the cliffs.
  • If you’re dog walking and recall is an ‘in-progress’ part of training, please keep your dog on a lead on the cliff-side of the beach so it can’t run into the under-cliff area.

And of course, please continue to be aware of how fast the incoming tide floods the under-cliff area. The tide can cut you off right under high-risk rock fall areas, so please:

  • Check the tide times before taking a walk (there’s widget on our home page to help with this).
  • Be aware that you can get cut off even up to 2 hours before the high tide is due!
  • Charge your phone before beach walks and visits and bring it with you, for emergency purposes.
Stay safe and #beachaware 👍

Remember, if you spot a problem, please call emergency services on 999 and ask for the coastguard.

IT COSTS MORE THAN £10k A YEAR TO KEEP OUR INDEPENDENT RESCUE BOAT CHARITY AFLOAT

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US

Thank you to C-Side Cafe, Pett

Feb 28, 2022

We would like to thank staff and customers of C-Side Cafe at Pett Level, for their continued support.

charity donation box at C-Side Cafe, Pett Level

Our relatively new neighbours have been hosting one of our donation boxes on their counter and their kind customers have been making a charity donation of small (and occasionally larger) change into the pot!

The latest amount raised is £54.80! Thank you again for your much valued support!

Are you a local business? If you’d like to host a donation pot for us, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us.

IT COSTS MORE THAN £10k A YEAR TO KEEP OUR RESCUE BOAT CHARITY AFLOAT

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US

Our Charity Open Day 2021

Sep 10, 2021

We’re very happy to share that our long-awaited boathouse Open Day 2021 has been an amazing success! Thanks to our volunteers, friends, their families, local businesses and a little help from the fabulous weather on the day, the day resulted in a record-breaking numbers. 

PLIRB BBQ, charity Open Day 2021
cake stall, charity Open Day 2021
First, we had a consistent stream of visitors to the event across the whole day, which meant that all our stall holders and guest charities were happy and busy. As well as this, our own stalls and fun and games were well attended and received lots of interest.
Homewood Leisure hot tub raffle, PLIRB Charity Open Day 2021
homewood leisure hot tub raffle 2021

There was also the marvellous addition of the donated hot tub up on the sea wall, which attracted a huge amount of interest! Donated by Stuart and Louise Homewood of Homewood Leisure, the £5k hot tub was the star prize for our major 2021 raffle and, thanks to its presence on the day, lots of additional tickets were bought in the run up to the draw.

Vic Lee, Corbeau Seats
Pulfer rescue boat and crew, sea display PLIRB 2021

Our launch and recovery vehicle and Pulfer boat took pride of of place on the sea wall, as the first official unveiling of the refurbished vehicle.  Vic Lee, owner of Corbeau seats came down to see the donated Corbeau seat in place and John Pulfer, who was the primary fundraiser for this very costly refurbishment, also came to see it unveiled publicly.

The vehicle was then in action to launch the Pulfer boat for the amazing sea display put on by our volunteer crews. This display demonstrated not only the demands of the vehicle in working on the Pett Level Beach, but also the versatility of our Pulfer boat and smaller Tornado boat, when working jointly and separately in search and rescue situations.

HOT TUB RAFFLE DRAW

The final event of the day was the draw for the generously donated £5k hot tub, from Louise and Stuart Homewood of Homewood Leisure. Present on the day, complete with the hot tub, Stuart had the honour of drawing the prize-winning ticket. With palpable excitement, Kev made the draw and the winning ticket was found to have been bought by ex-PLIRB Chair David Martin, and his wife Barbara!

SPECIAL THANKS TO …

There are so many individuals, businesses and organisations to thank for the success of our day. Here are just some that we have space to give a special mention to:

*  Louise and Stuart Homewood of Homewood Leisure for the donation of the fantastic £5k star prize in our hot tub auction, and to everyone who purchased a ticket.

*  Little Gems and Winchelsea Beach Cafe for vouchers, used as consolation prizes in the Grand Raffle. 

*  Sean at SOS Entertainment for the loan of the PA system for the day

*  Tic Tocory and Tea Beside the Orchard for donating specialist cakes for the cake stall. Huge thanks too to Greens Cakes who donated a job lot of cake mixes, and more thanks for the volunteers and friends who used mixes and their own time and ingredients to make the amazing amount of cakes we had available on the very appetising cake stall!

*  Thanks to all for the generous bottle donations for our bottle tombola, including from the Royal Oak and the New Inn at Westfield.

*  Thanks to Mat and Holly for the musical entertainment, and to Rocky (recently seen on TV in SAS Who Dares Wins) for more gentle entertainment of balloon animal magic!

*  Rother Responders and Fairlight Community First Responders, and to Strandliners for coming along to share information about their own charities, and Rye Bay Coastguards, all organisations we work jointly with.

*  Immy, Henry, Tommy and Archie, our fantastic fundraising pebble painters. They recently raised over £100 for us by painting pebbles which they gave away in return for a donation. They were guests of honour at the event and presented PLIRB with a special pebble painted with our logo.

*  And to Mike Peplar for helping us to capture this outstanding Open Day Sea Display on video.

PLIRB wonderful pebble painters, PLIRB Charity Open Day 2021

THANKS TO EVERYONE

And of course to our amazing volunteers and their own friends and families who helped out with planning and delivering this and to everyone who attended or donated in whatever way to make the day a success.

And that record-breaking total?

£6814.65!

 

This amazing amount will be used to support continued (and rising running costs) and to help us with some of our overall equipment project pots. So to everyone who contributed to this fantastic result, thank you so much.

WHILST YOU'RE HERE ...

If you would like to support us, your donation will help us assist those in danger on our local coastline.

Thank you so much, from the volunteers at Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat.

Would you like to help us with a donation towards the costs of our continued vehicle refurbishments?

PLIRB Events and Updates for July 21

Jun 30, 2021

A quick update on what’s been happening at out boathouse in recent weeks and what’s coming up for us now that we’ve hit July … 

Since returning to the boathouse once restrictions started to ease in March (at least for outside activities), our volunteers have been pretty busy. We’ve not just been getting back into old routines, but also adjusting these to take the ‘new normal’ into account.

Then, with the arrival of Easter and a round of restrictions lifting in April, local beaches started getting much busier. This has meant that our volunteer beach, base and boat crews have been involved in incident support and first aid to such an extent that we’ve had a rota of volunteer presence at the boathouse  on both weekend days throughout May and June. This will continue across the summer as we’ve had several call-outs which have benefited from our rescue-ready presence.

As part of this increased presence at the boathouse, we’re also regularly giving First Aid support on the weekends. As we anticipate a continued demand for this as the summer holidays progress, we’re happy to provide this community service as long as we have volunteers available.

To support us with  accident prevention, if you have visitors staying with you this summer, please make visitors aware of how easy it is to slip, trip and fall on the rocks and other hazards on local beaches.

Drowning Prevention Week

Whilst we’re talking about prevention, we’re also happy to share that we took part in the Royal Life Saving Society’s Drowning Awareness Week in June. The aim of the week is to raise awareness about drowning prevention and for our own part, we wanted to also share messages of how to reduce risk at local beaches. We’ve dedicated a blog post to this, so information and RLSS links and resources can be available across the other 52 weeks of the year too!

Communications Upgrade Project

We also happy to share some  exciting news about our Communications Project. Although we still have a little way to go with raising all the funds we need to upgrade the hardware used by our beach crews too, the dashboard platform and helmet bluetooth system for the Pulfer boat and its crews have now been successfully installed.

Already, this has made a huge difference in terms of clarity of communications. The system has the added benefits of being entirely hands-free for boat crew and is fully compatible with systems used by HM Coastguard, Search and Rescue helicopter teams and the RNLI, so our collaborative communications should now be much more effective when we are involved in multi-services incidents or taking part in joint training  with our emergency services colleagues.

Ongoing Fundraisers

With the continuation of the communications upgrade project, as well as all the usual costs of repairs to equipment and the need to ensure we have the running costs for next year covered, we have several fundraising activities planned. Of course, like everyone else, we’re waiting to see what 19th July brings but in the meantime, restrictions-permitting, our fundraising and events calendar is looking like this: 

  • We have been invited to take our Tornado boat, donation buckets and merchandise along to the Co-op at Winchelsesa Beach on Saturday 24th July and 31st July, so please come along and say hello.
  • We’ll also be coming up to be a part of Icklesham Fete on 7th August and Winchelsea Fete on August 14th, so again please come and see us to chat about the work we do or find out more about volunteering with us.
  • Our rescheduled Open Day is still planned for Sunday 29th August. This includes the Homewood Leisure Hot Tub Grand Draw. Tickets will be available right up to the draw date, including at our boathouse and at Winchelsea Fete. Tickets are also available from Fairlight Stores and Post Office, from The Old Butcher’s, Pett and of course from the generous donor, Homewood Leisure.
  • Our 2022 calendar photo competition. This competition is starting to gain momentum but plenty more entries would be welcome well before the closing date.

We look forward to updating you further as things open up a little more. In the meantime, #staysafe and #beachaware out there.

WHILST YOU'RE HERE ...

We’re an independent charity run solely by volunteers.

We receive no government or central funding and have to fundraise every penny needed to buy and maintain our equipment and to pay our considerable running costs.

Since the start of 2020, our running costs have increased to around £10,000 a year.

If you like the work we do and would like to support us, your donation would really be appreciated.

Anything you can spare will help us to help those in danger on our local coastline.

Thank you so much, from the volunteers at Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat.

Donations are welcome, they keep us afloat, saving lives ...