The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in Scotland praised crew members in Angus who are going beyond the call of duty in their commitment to saving lives at sea.
Crew in Arbroath and Montrose balance work and family with responding to emergency calls around the clock, weekly training and raising money to maintain a service all for free.
The Montrose RNLI crew are taking part in a haggis-eating event tomorrow night, while Arbroath volunteers are to swim the 22 miles from the harbour to the Bell Rock lighthouse and back on Sunday to mark the RNLI’s national SOS Day.
RNLI spokesman Richard Smith said, “The Angus crews are on call all the time and they go out on the shouts. They also have weekly training exercises and they might have to read up about various procedures.”
He added, “They have already got a lot on their plate as it is and that’s highly commendable.”
Scotland’s volunteer lifeboat crews rescued more than 900 people last year.Call-outsIn 2010 the Arbroath lifeboat was called out 37 times, making 25 rescues, while Montrose lifeboat was launched 18 times, making six rescues.
Mr Smith said the decline of the fishing industry and cutbacks in Angus means there are fewer volunteers with a seafaring background and many struggle to respond to a daytime call as they work out of town.
He said, “In the past everybody lived locally, they didn’t commute and they were all in a town.
“Now fishing fleets have got decimated over the decades and there are less people working in the fishing industry.
“Only one in 10 of our crew has a seafaring background which means we need to train them all to a very high level, because we are basically starting from scratch with many volunteers and it costs £1200 every year to train every member of crew.”
He added, “The way the system works is there is an emergency call and the coastguard asks us if we are able to launch and we always say yes. We never missed anything in Scotland during the bad weather despite ice and snow.”
Mr Smith said, “We can always launch a boat but the problem is we may not have too many on the books during the day to draw upon.”