Raymie Sinclair of Kirkwall was given a bottle of whisky to raffle for the lifeboats; £20 was raised but when the winning ticket was drawn no one could read the name on the ticket. The bottle was therefore raffled again and brought in a further £21. The generous winner of this draw, George Irvine, promptly handed the bottle back to be raffled once again. The whisky had by now become famous and raised £100 the third time. Lena Watson won it but said she could not possibly keep it. The fourth raffle made £104 but was won by a family which had once been guided home by Kirkwall lifeboat. They gave it back. Now due to be raffled yet again, the bottle sports an extra label with all its winners inscribed to date and has £245 to its name.

Warrant Officer T. W. White and Corporal P. Hasnip of the Second Royal Tank Regiment heard of the Flamborough lifeboat appeal and organised a collection in the regiment, then serving in Northern Ireland; £56 was raised. This amount, which was greatly appreciated in Flamborough, helped bring the total of the appeal up to £33,000.

Fund raising by the Jersey station and guild has been very successful this year; their lifeboat weekend brought in £950, twice as much as 1979. The guild's souvenir shop had in two and a half months grossed £2,500 and during the second Jersey Boat and Leisure Show the guild was provided with a stand by its organisers EDO (Jersey) Ltd. Here about £700 was raised by selling raffle tickets for a return Sealink trip, with car, to the UK and many other prizes, with a further £500 made on the sale of souvenirs.An afternoon given over to the RNLI on Maurice Keen's farm made excellent entertainment for 400 adults and many children last July. Demonstrations of milking, spinning and the workings of modern agricultural machinery and an exhibition of restored old farm equipment provided great interest and the children were able to take pony and tractor-drawn trailer rides. The cream tea and cake and produce stall helped towards an impressive £400 profit for Reigate and Redhill ladies' guild.

Doctor and Mrs Ingram from Hampstead Garden Suburb held an outdoor luncheon party at their home on one of the few sunny days last summer.

Everyone enjoyed the event which had the added bonus of providing £206 for the RNLI.

Ilorin Palm, a ship of the Palm Line, was recently sold; some seven years earlier her master had been presented with the nameplate of a steam engine from the Nigerian Railway, the Emir of Ilorin. Until the ship was sold the nameplate adorned the bar in the officers' lounge but when she left the Palm Line fleet, her master, Captain Brand, presented this collector's piece to the RNLI. At a Sotheby's auction recently the nameplate fetched £137.75 for the lifeboats.

Barbecued mackerel were on sale outside the lifeboat station during Lyme Regis's lifeboat week. It was the idea of Dutch visitors Bert de Rooij and Mr and Mrs Erwin Kroom. The fish had been specially caught earlier by Jack Ellis from his angling boat Tia Maria III. Over £60 was raised.

Over 130 rods took part in the fifth annual fishing competition organised by Selsey Bill Fishing Club at West Sands, Selsey. Coxswain Mike Grant with station honorary secretary Desmond Cockayne were presented with a cheque for £352.50 by the fishing club's chairman, Glen Gainsford-Betty. The competition is one of the most popular along the Sussex coast and has made over £1,000 for the RNLI since it began.

By sponsoring record requests RAF Swinderby Recruit Centre amassed £211.20 for the RNLI. A cheque for this amount was handed over to area organiser S. C. Swallow by Corporal Gray on behalf of the centre.

Scarborough Flower Club got together with the ladies' lifeboat guild to stage a flower festival in the 800- year-old parish church for the RNLI.

There were 50 different arrangements and many of the flowers used were specially flown over from Holland.

Also on display were vellum testimonials of local lifeboatmen's bravery awards. Rear Admiral W. J. Graham, director of the Institution, was there to receive a cheque for the £1,502 profit.Television actor Ian Cuthbertson was landed by Troon lifeboat Connel Elizabeth Cargill to open the Scottish Boat Show in Troon Marina. The ladies' guild brought in over £2,200 during the show by selling souvenirs, raffling a gallon of Martell cognac which was drawn by committee of management member, Robin Knox-Johnston and by manning the turnstiles thus receiving a proportion of the gate money. A further £600 was raised at a ball for exhibitors at the show.

A four-legged fancy dress race was staged by Port Isaac branch in September.

Ten teams competed, each made up of three people with legs tied so that only four legs were left to a team. Their 2'/2 mile quadruped progress was interspersed by breaks at five different hostelries and a barbecue awaited them at the finishing point.

Bass Ltd and Whitbread Ltd helped generously with refreshments and amid considerable hilarity £600 was raised.

The children at Grange Junior School, Letchworth, who help raise money for the lifeboat service, had the opportunity of wearing oilskins and boarding a 16ft D class inflatable lifeboat when their headmaster Peter Barrett towed one into the school grounds during the town's lifeboat week. Peter Barrett is a member of the local committee that raised £800 during the week.A member of Morpeth ladies' guild found an expensive looking ring in the sand on the beach while she was on holiday; she took it to the Police Station, hoping the owner would claim it.

No one came forward, however, so the Police returned the ring to the finder who promptly handed it over to her guild. It was sold and made £150 for the RNLI.

During their Easter holidays for the past three years, about 70 young children of Skegness have come together to take part in a two-hour sponsored silence organised by local ladies' guild assistant honorary secretary, Jane Major. Refreshments are provided, but the children bring their own games and books. In three years £1,300 has been raised—in silence.

Every year the English Bridge Union organises a nationwide bridge event in aid of a charity. 1980 was the year for the RNLI and a resultant cheque for £1,824.55 was sent to head office by executive secretary. Peter Briggs.

A fete on the green at Yarmouth earned £650 for West Wight ladies' guild in August and a coffee morning given at the invitation of Mrs Calvert Jones made a further £100 towards the guild's funds.

Longridge and District branch, Lancashire, is 20 years old; under the chairmanship of Mrs E. C. Dickson and with Elsie Carefoot as honorary secretary since its foundation, the branch has been celebrating its birthday with some vigorous fund raising. The house-to-house collecting brought in a record of £250; 'An Evening in Dairyland with Fruit and Flowers' combining demonstrations of cookery by the Milk Marketing Board and of flower arranging resulted in mouth-watering dishesand beautiful blooms for raffling, and in all £210 was raised for branch funds; and finally, with a cheque from the Road Haulage Association's Tipper Convention and £250 from Group 1 staff of the closing Red Scar Works of Courtaulds, a grand annual total of £1,800 has been achieved.

Shoreline member David Holt along with other members of Epsom and Ewell Men's Swimming Club and Epsom District Swimming Club organised a sponsored swim last April which raised £462 for the lifeboats. The event lasted three hours with swimmers aged between seven and seventeen taking part. Two years ago the local Epsom and Ewell branch presented the club with a trophy which is now competed for annually. Since they began their support they have raised a total of £1,500 for the RNLI.Wendy Dedicott teaches six- to seven-year-olds at Malvern Link Infants School and encourages their interest in lifeboats by arranging for them to collect stamps to be sold in aid of the RNLI. Last year her class amassed 5,000 stamps and so far this year in only half a term 20,000 have been collected.

Padstow ladies' guild's most energetic collector, Mary Taylor, created a new personal record during lifeboat week by raising £243. Another helper, Simon Jackman, who lives in St Albans but is always in Padstow during lifeboat week, collected £100.60; meanwhile May Hellyar, who was recovering from a road accident, still managed to tour the local beaches to bring in £70.50.

With £1,000 coming from Doreen Williams's souvenir stall, a new flag day record of £2,070 was achieved.

Axe Yacht Club (East Devon) arranged a day for the lifeboats in August; £96 was collected with the help of a coffee morning, a raffle, an evening barbecue and fees for entering the RNLI pennant race. Seaton and Beer branch supplied souvenirs and £230 worth were sold by three lady members of the yacht club.

To fly 100 metres was all that was asked of the ten competitors in Hartlepool Harbour fete's birdman rally.

One after another they leapt off a special platform on Heugh Breakwater with dreams of winning £250; one after another they and their dreams crash landed ignominiously in the sea at the foot of the breakwater. There was some consolation; Malcolm Smedley was adjudged to have flown furthest and won £100 and local lifeboatman Malcolm Noble on a child's bicycle with a propeller and umbrella was awarded a similar amount for being the most entertaining competitor. The fete itself brought in over £3,800.

It took one hour and 56 minutes for the fastest team of five runners to complete the 20-mile relay course in a sponsored run organised by Alan Hallgate of the Adventure School of Kingsley Leisure Centre, Westward Ho! Twenty-six teams took part with competitors coming from Bideford, Barnstaple and Torrington. One team raised £300 in sponsorship and the total revenue for Appledore branch was £l,210.42'/2.

An auctioneer, Ray Price, who is 60 years old, bicycled 225 miles from Land's End back to his home town of Fordingbridge in Hampshire, his arrival coinciding with the local show. He tripled his sponsorship target by raising £900 for the RNLI.

Mevagissey branch entertained the participants in a sponsored fishing trip to a reception after they had raised £500 for the RNLI. Members of Truro City Sea Angling Club were sponsored for the number of fish they caught from the boat Eileen. Money also came from the sale of their catch, its quantity being doubled through the generosity of the boat's skipper, Bernard Hunkin.

' must be very hard to save people' observes Robert Kettle of Class 7, Lymm Statham Primary School, Cheshire, in a letter to the RNLI after hearing a talk about the lifeboats. To make it easier he and other children from his school made a collection at their Harvest Festival and were able to send a cheque for £110 to the North West district office.

In 1955 the St Saviour Darby and Joan Club, Guernsey, began its allegiance to the RNLI by collecting £4 in ship halfpennies; the following year they collected £8 and the next £9. This year the members have made a generous donation of £70 to Guernsey branch.A grand draw and collection organised by Grimsby ladies' guild brought in £1,346 within a three week period.

Under the chairmanship of Mrs Lamont, who founded the guild some years ago, the income of the guild has shown impressive annual increases.

Simon Foulkes's personal sponsorship totalled £135 when the third and fourth year pupils of Poole Grammar School took part in a 'metre beater' 15-minute sprint in aid of the Mountbatten of Burma lifeboat appeal. His was the highest individual amount raised in an event which brought in over £1,400. The school achieved a further £300 with a sponsored table tennis competition and by the sale of Christmas gifts.

Mrs M. R. Frampton of Swalecliffe who is in her eighties and a long time sufferer from spinal arthritis, has this year knitted 15 children's hats for her daughter's RNLI effort. Mrs Frampton claims she has no time for occupational therapy; although knitting for lifeboats may hurt a bit, she feels she is being useful.

Flamborough lifeboat appeal was boosted by £3,300 when Bridlington Lions Club in conjunction with Bridlington and District Women's Darts League organised a sponsored darts marathon.

People aged six to sixty, 130 of them, started and finished the Bridgwater sponsored walk. They came from many different walks of life: pupils and teachers from St Audries Girls' School, Brymore School (Cannington), Blake School (Bridgwater), St Crispin's School (Street), and Queen's College (Taunton); members of the Sea Anglers and other local organisations; and even a family from Rugby had come to take part. The event was organised by president of the branch, Jack Pride, chairman Geoffrey Pitman and secretary Fay Harvey and £1,000 was raised.

Diving clubs from Brighton, Eastbourne, Seaford, Newhaven and Billinghurst took part in a five-mile swim from Shoreham Cement Works to Kingston Beach last June. The fastest swimmers finished the course in 90 minutes, the slowest in nearly three hours. £1,500 was raised to be shared between the RNLI and the St John's Ambulance Brigade.

Mr P. A. Edwards, oganiser of Clacton-on-Sea flag day, last year experimented with selling RNLI sandcastle flags at the same time as playing his part in the street collection. When he started, a confectioner's sweet jar, suitably relabelled, was filled with 50 sandcastle flags—but not for long. All were sold within two hours, many people stopping their cars to buy flags for their children and then putting a further donation in the lifeboat box as well.

The final total for the flag day was £1,031.78, another record for Clacton.

New Milton/Barton-On-Sea branch raised £1,726 for the Mountbatten of Burma lifeboat appeal; a special draw raised £1,068 while donations and the sale of share certificates accounted for the remaining £658. Altogether the branch has raised £7,107 in another record year of fund raising.

A highly enjoyable and very successful open day was held at Hoylake lifeboat station last summer. A display in front of the promenade included an exercise involving the lifeboat and a helicopter and the fly-past of a Shackleton rescue plane. An exhibition of model boats, a film show by the Sea Cadets and a Police diving team demonstration were among other attractions and a remarkable £1,500 was achieved as a result.

The ladies of Penistone guild kept silent for a full 30 minutes when they had decided to do something different for the RNLI. This proved to be a great success as £261 was raised from sponsorship..