RNLI Lifeboat Crew Volunteering

Skillmister

Skillmister

Skillmister

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Wales
Not entirely sure this is the right sub-forum but didn't fancy the usual GD responses.


Does anyone here volunteer for the RNLI?


I'm meeting with the head of my local lifeboat station next week to discuss it as I'm not sure it fits my lifestyle but it is something I am keen on doing if possible.

I live 3 minutes drive from 1 lifeboat station, 5 from another and work 2 minutes jog from the first one. Perfect candidate in terms of location? :p

But the whole on call 24/7 thing, I need to know when and how having 'time off' applies. E.g I do a lot of walking/biking where I would be "out of range" so to speak. Do you have to formally book off any time you aren't going to be available or is it a case of just show up as soon as you can and they work on the basis of having so many volunteers per station that enough should show up to a call?

All questions I'll be asking next week but would like to get a bit of an idea beforehand if possible so I'm not just wasting their time.

Average call outs for my local station seems to be about 1 a week give or take, but obviously I can't just hope those call outs happen when I'm in the area!

I also don't know whether my employer would actually let me do it but if they didn't it would be a pretty poor show imo.
 
Yeah I've read that, it does say

People who cannot get away from their jobs during the day make sure they are on call during the night.
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and

The Brighton station is generally unmanned, but when the coastguard issues an alert all crew are paged and those who are available rush to the station.
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though.
 
I very much doubt they just wing it and hope enough people will turn up to a shout, what if everyone decided they weren't around on that day there'll be some sort of rota system.
 
I've no idea what those quotes mean and whether they have any impact on my situation, that's the aim of the thread, to find out :D

If not I'll wait till next week and report back if anyone is interested.
 
Was watching a show about one of the London and south coast stations and they were on 12 hours shifts & 'on call' schedules respectively. I'd imagine it will vary based on how busy the area and even time of year is.

I'm sort of surprised that the local station hasn't provided you with that information, maybe they are a little more informal?
 
The London one is different because it is permanently staffed round the clock (I watched the show too :p).

I'm sure they will give me all the information when I see them on Monday, I haven't spoken to anyone there properly yet
 
Right then, for those interested, I had a good long chat with the operations manager of my local station last night.

Basically, I am the perfect candidate for their current requirements as they lack members who are extremely nearby during the day (working hours) as more people tend to live near and work further away than vice versa.

Unfortunately, they currently have 2 "trainees" which is the max they take on at any one time :( so will give me a ring when they are recruiting if I give them my details.

Regarding being on call and being able to carry on going out biking etc, they said go for it. At the end of the day its volunteering, having you on call but unable to attend is better than not having you at all. They have 30+ people volunteering at this station and need less than half that to attend to get both boats in and out. Even less to attend immediately to get the boat out, need more to help bring it in.

They don't expect people to put their life on hold or treat it as a full time job. If you get paged you get there asap if you can, if not then so be it. Although if you know you're going to be miles away for a full day or more then you note it 'on the board'.

I'm definitely registering my interest and look forward to hopefully getting called up to start training. Might make a little bit of a training log if people are interested as it involves exercises like capsizing a boat in a pitch black room & tank of water with helicopter sounds being blared out overhead etc :eek:
 
I'm going to look into the same when I move to Aberdeen in a couple of months. It's something I've always said I would do if in the right place, and my granddad was a big supporter of the RNLI.

I've done my BOSIET for offshore work etc which involved similar training to what you're talking about, having to sit buckled into a helicopter chassis while it's dunked underwater and tipped upside down before escaping. I'm fairly comfortable with the whole being underwater stuff so the training should be ok, although it's obviously a very different situation in real life.

I'd definitely be interested in hearing your experiences if you do get in, it'll be a few months before I can consider applying anyway.
 
Skillmister said:
Right then, for those interested, I had a good long chat with the operations manager of my local station last night.

Basically, I am the perfect candidate for their current requirements as they lack members who are extremely nearby during the day (working hours) as more people tend to live near and work further away than vice versa.

Unfortunately, they currently have 2 "trainees" which is the max they take on at any one time :( so will give me a ring when they are recruiting if I give them my details.

Regarding being on call and being able to carry on going out biking etc, they said go for it. At the end of the day its volunteering, having you on call but unable to attend is better than not having you at all. They have 30+ people volunteering at this station and need less than half that to attend to get both boats in and out. Even less to attend immediately to get the boat out, need more to help bring it in.

They don't expect people to put their life on hold or treat it as a full time job. If you get paged you get there asap if you can, if not then so be it. Although if you know you're going to be miles away for a full day or more then you note it 'on the board'.

I'm definitely registering my interest and look forward to hopefully getting called up to start training. Might make a little bit of a training log if people are interested as it involves exercises like capsizing a boat in a pitch black room & tank of water with helicopter sounds being blared out overhead etc :eek:
Click to expand...

Great idea about the training log. I reckon it would be really interesting :)
 
I would love to do this but living in the Peak District means I'm "just" outside the catchment area :(

Although a training log would be fantastic
 
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