Supporting the Community – Surviving Christmas Collection Point

Nov 9, 2019

Just a reminder that on Sunday mornings through November, the Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat venue is open as a collection point for items to be donated to Surviving Christmas.

Surviving Christmas is a local charity which provides support to individuals and families in need over the winter and festive period, across our local Hastings and Rother District area.

Surviving Christmas does have collection points in the local area, but as these are mainly in Hastings and as we’re always down at the base on Sunday mornings, it makes sense to offer those who live in our area the chance to make their donations to a local collection point.

The important thing about these food item donations is that the items should be non-perishable and should of course have a long enough date that they will still be in date over the Christmas / New Year period. To help, the next image is of information from  the Surviving Christmas website, listing the kinds of provisions that would be appreciated. If you’d like to know more, there’s plenty of additional information on the charity’s website and social media.

 

We know there are many friends of Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat who would be happy to help make a difference to someone else’s Christmas, so we’d be grateful if you could pass the message on about our collection point?

It’s great to work together with the community on this, and we’re very grateful to be receiving donations throughout November. We’ll share the progress of the box of goodies weekly on our social media, so please follow along and stay involved. Thank you!

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!

Taking a Team Moment

Jun 15, 2019

A sunny Sunday morning … but it’s not just about the training.

This Sunday’s training out on the water didn’t all go as planned. It was one of those mornings when the effects of the tide and necessary maintenance and checks on boats and vehicles of course took priority! In turn, this impacts on the type of activities we carry out  during our Sunday morning sessions.

As a result, this Sunday was much more about ‘getting sorted’ vehicle-wise, boathouse-wise and preparation for the summer season with a busy beach-wise! As usual, the team all pulled together to make sure that the necessary tasks were carried out. In Sunday sessions like this, this is done in ways which still accommodate the sharing of knowledge and experience across the team. For example, full crew volunteers are particularly great at showing new volunteers how tasks are carried out safely and efficiently, whether on the boat or in the base.

A team of volunteers is still a ‘working’ team

Watching all of this take place, it’s great to see the levels of teamwork and hard work which goes into making our independent rescue service so efficient and diligent. Of course, not every team member is there every week – several of our members weren’t available this weekend – but that’s all part of what happens and it’s another way in which the overall PLIRB team has a progressive and constantly adapting dynamic.

In fact, one of the real strengths of our team is that individuals step in and out of roles as required. For instance, someone could be leading teams or sub-teams one week and being trained in a new task or activity the next. This variety is great preparation for ‘Shout’ situations, when the team at base and on the boats will rely on whatever combination of individuals (and their skills) are able to get to the boathouse quickly in time to launch.

It’s a more than a little sad for us that several of our younger volunteers (all full crew members) will be moving away after the summer. We’re glad to see them taking their next steps to progress their future careers, but they will be sorely missed. This is one of the reasons we took the opportunity to grab a quick suited-and-booted ‘some of the team’ photo, even though not all of the crew were around.

All of these younger crew members readily share that being part of the Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat has helped them in forging their chosen career paths. Thankfully for us,  they’ll be around for a few weeks yet and they’re keen to share their knowledge and to help other would-be volunteers to find out what it’s like to be part of our boat and base crews. So if you would like to find out more, please do come along to the boathouse from 9 a.m. any Sunday and chat to us.

 

Click to contact us through this website. You can also get in touch using our social media with #Team@PLIRBRescue.

A Visitor & A Big Thank You

Jun 5, 2019

This weekend we had a lovely visitor! Tony Heath came along to receive a big thank you from the PLIRB.

An enthusiastic sailor, Tony Heath recently retired his boat . Tony’s wife, Diana, suggested he might want to donate some of his equipment somewhere it would be appreciated and, thankfully for Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat, Tony chose us. And it’s true to say that we are really feeling the benefits from his decision and from the wealth of equipment he’s donated to us, including ropes and a small Zodiac boat, complete with oars.

This Zodiac boat has especially been a great extension to our training. It’s perfect for the crew to use in rescue training scenarios. Trainees can use it to row out to sea then, once offshore, the oars are taken out of the water to simulate a ‘drifting’ vessel. Crews then practice safe rescue of this smaller-sized vessel. In fact, we carried out this type of rescue last year, in particular a group of persons drifting out to open sea from the Camber area.

At the height of the season, inflatables drifting out to sea is a common call-out for us in our efforts to keep the public safe at the beach. A ‘drifting’ Zodiac is a good approximation for an inflatable of various sizes and shapes, so it’s great to have it for additional practice.

Our eagle-eyed supporters may also have spotted that the Zodiac was used in this way for the sea display last weekend at our Open Day.

This weekend it was Tony’s turn to be part of the team, when he joined crew on our Pulfer boat for a pre-training excursion. This involved a trip along the water to Cliff End, plus some interactions with the smaller Tornado boat. Tony’s wife was also able to enjoy spending time with the base crew, watching from the Look Out area of the boathouse.

Tony Heath, equipment donation, boat visitTony Heath, equipment donation, independent rescue boat charityTony Heath, equipment donation, independent rescue boat charity

We’d like to say a very public thank you to Tony for his equipment donations. These have made a big difference to us in terms of training. By supplying equipment we might otherwise have had to pay for, Tony has also saved us a significant amount of funds. Thank you so much, Tony!

Open Day 2019 – grand total & updates!

Jun 2, 2019

Oyez! Oyez! This year’s Open Day on Sunday 26th May 2019 was amazing!

The total raised so far is a massive £2682.08 …

thanks to everyone who has supported us with time, prize donations & by coming along.

Yes, our day was remarkable … the sun shone (mostly), some wonderful people came along to help us on the day and many more came along to enjoy the activities and support us and other community charities who were with us on the day, Rother Respinders and Hastings Young People’s Service (shown below).

 

 

 

To put our massive total into context, last year we raised approximately £1600 in two hours of absolutely appalling weather.

This year however, our £2682.08 (…and counting) was raised in four hours.

As the afternoon continued, we had to bring forward our the sea display, as a bit of windy weather came rolling in … so a massive thank you to everyone who stayed to watch this despite the sea wall area becoming a bit of a cold and draughty place to stand!

Open Day, sea display, launchOpen Day, sea display, casualty retrievalOpen Day, sea display, towing & retrievalOpen Day display 2019, towing, retrievalOpen Day, sea display, towing, retrieval, sea safetyOpen Day, sea display, capsize exerciseOpen Day, sea display, back into boatOpen Day, sea display, towing, return to shoreOpen Day, sea display, return to shoreOpen Day, sea display, return to shore

After the afternoon of extra-volume announcements thanks to Mayor and Town Crier of Rye, Paul Goring, we then had the fun of the raffle drawn by John Godley, Mayor of Winchelsea.

Thank you so much to everyone who supported us.

Your support will help to keep us afloat for another year and is much appreciated.

Open Day – Quick Update & Thank YOU!

May 28, 2019

The counting continues, but in the meantime we’d like to offer a big thank you to those who helped make Open Day 2019 such a success!