Atlantic 85 due for two-year trial – when it is built
AN INFLATABLE inshore rescue boat due to be trialled in the island is still being built, but should be here by December.
St John Ambulance announced in May that it would cease its inshore rescue boat service in August and since then the Y boat from the St Peter Port lifeboat, Spirit of Guernsey, has been working alone in its place.
The RNLI will be trialling a new 27.7ft Atlantic 85 B-Class Rib for two years once it is delivered and the necessary training has taken place.
Lifeboat operations manager Captain Peter Gill said it was a much larger boat than the crew were used to and new volunteers might need to be recruited.
‘Only when it gets here can we get on with the training. The range of skills needed are very different.
‘It’s a case of waiting for them to finish building the boat, we should get it some time in December.
‘We’ve had a lot of discussions about who should be on the boat. We’ve been told that no one over 55 can be on the crew for health reasons and three or four are on the wrong side, so at the moment it will fall to the others.
‘There’s a number of complicated features so we’ll start with the current crew. There’s a large number of people who have put their names down and we thank them all. In the UK they often have difficulty recruiting for the lifeboats and it’s good to know it’s still an aspirational thing over here,’ he said.
Since January, the RNLI has been called out 16 times.
‘Insofar as any period can be described as ordinary, 2018 has been a very routine and largely average year,’ wrote Captain Gill in the RNLI newsletter.
Of the calls, two of those were to people stranded on rocks.
