Our Charity Open Day 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. 

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.

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.

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!