Supporting the Community – Pett Flower Show

Jul 28, 2019

Just a follow up to say what a great time we had at this year’s Pett Flower Show.

The event took place on Saturday 27th July 2019 and as usual Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat base, boat and committee volunteers were asked to come along and run the BBQ and to provide First Aid.

We were busy right from the start, spending the early part of the afternoon setting up our BBQ – which was overseen by our regular ‘Master’ chefs, Bill and John.

Alongside this, we then prepared our First Aid point so it was ready and waiting. Happily though, as the afternoon progressed our First Aid was barely needed as everyone enjoyed a safe and happy time, apart from a plaster and an insect sting. No BBQ-based burns either!

The BBQ was busy, and this raised funds for Pett Village committee activities, so it was great to be supporting our local community with this.

As we’re building up our merchandising, we also took along some of our calendars, greetings cards and car stickers to add to the table. It was great to have a few customers supporting us with these – and even a return customer who had already bought one batch of our picturesque Pett Level greetings cards and loved them so much, she returned to by another set!

In all, we sold quite a few items throughout the afternoon and these sales, along with the donation received from the Pett Flower Show committee as a thank you for our help, meant we raised around £50 towards the running costs of our rescue boats.

We’d like to say a big thank you to all who attended the village fete and flower show and supported the Pett community, and to everyone who came over to chat to us and support us by buying some of our merchandise.

The next community fete we’re helping at is Winchelsea Fete on Saturday 10th August – so we hope to see many of our friends and supporters there. And if you haven’t met us yet? We’re currently recruiting more volunteers, so please come along and say hello!

For a Limited Time, It’s Now Possible To Support Us When You Shop at Asda

Jul 12, 2019

Good news, good news! For a limited time this summer, it’s possible to support us at no extra cost to yourself. How? Simply by shopping in-store at Asda St. Leonards!

Because the great news is that for the next three months, we’re one of the charity donation nominees at the St. Leonard’s store.

As a nominated rescue boat charity, the Pett Level Independent Rescue boat is in with the chance of gaining a fundraising boost through Asda’s Green Token Giving scheme.

Each store has three prizes of 1st place: £500, 2nd & 3rd place: £200 each. In each case, the donation is made by Asda, to the charity.

 

The token system

 

How it works is that qualifying purchases made at the Asda store mean you’ll be offered a green token when you pay at the checkout. Then, on the way out of the store, there’s the choice of placing your green token into the token collection point. At this point, you’ll have a choice from three charities – only one of which can win first prize.

At the end of the 3 months, the tokens are counted up and the winning charity gains the 1st place prize of £500, with the runner up charities each receiving £200 from Asda.

The other chosen charities alongside us for this fun competition are the Hastings Sea Cadets and Surviving the Streets. Both of these charities do amazing work in the local area, so please take a look at their websites and the work they do.

Doing this in advance of your shopping at Asda means you can make a well-informed choice about where to pop your green token! Of course, we’d love it if you could support us  – by the way, ours is the blue collection pathway, just like our shirts – but we’d also like you to be aware of your options – we’re all great local causes after all. As such, we’d also like to wish both the Hastings Sea Cadets and Surviving the Streets all the very best from this fundraiser too – it’s great to be sharing this opportunity with them, thanks to Asda.

 

See you there?

 

To help raise our profile, funds and sea safety awareness, Asda has also given us permission to run our own donation-day fundraiser up at Asda St. Leonards on Saturday 17th August. We’ll be up there for most of the day, complete with our Tornado boat, so it would be great if you could come along and say hello. Please do also come along and talk to us on the day if you’d like to know more about volunteering with us – it would be great to tell you all about it.

As an independent lifeboat charity, we do all of our own fundraising to pay our running and training costs.

We’d really like to say thank you so much to Asda for their support in helping us to raise these vital funds. Thank you!

Two Rescue Launches in One Evening

Jul 2, 2019

The summer season has begun with a busy evening. On Monday July 1st, the Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat shore and boat crews were tasked to assist in two emergencies on the local coastline.

At 17:38, the Pulfer boat launched in response to a request from Solent Coastguard. This followed reports of windsurfer who was possibly in difficulty, approximately a mile out to sea from the slipway.

Our crews assembled and scramble extremely quickly in response to pagers going off. This facilitated a speedy launch within minutes of initial reports. Once in position, the boat crew was requested by Solent to carry out an expanding box search. This search specifically targets locating a person in the water.

At 18:00, the boat was given new directions, searching farther along Cliff End, heading westwards towards Ecclesbourne Glen. Following this, it was identified that the windsurfer had already come safely out of the water and crews were stood down.

At 19:06, teams were tasked on a second emergency. In response, the Pulfer boat re-launched with change of crew, to assist Hastings Coastguard Rescue Team. This followed a report of a person at potential risk of suicide towards the cliff edge in the area of Old Fairlight. Thankfully, the individual was assisted to safety by police at the cliff top. Our crews were then stood down and boat ashore at 19:35.

Also involved in these incidents were Hastings Coastguard rescue, Rye Bay Coastguard Rescue team, both lifeboats from RNLI Hastings and Search and Rescue Helicopter colleagues from Lydd (Rescue 163).

Remember, if you see someone in trouble at sea, on the beach coastline or on the cliff top, please dial 999 and ask for the Coastguard.