The record breakers: on Sunday, June 14, 1987, in Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Eire, 329 sailing boats formed the shape of a sunflower beating the previous world record of 192 boats to moor alongside one another - a feat since ratified by the Guinness Book of Records. The sunflower raft was organised by the City of Dublin lifeboat appeal committee and raised £16,000 towards the total raised to date of £000,000. Chairman of the organising committee was Terence Johnson and raft master (who had the job of allocating all the boats to different areas in the sunflower) was John Guinness. Boats taking part ranged in size from 50ft to 9ft in length and also on hand were the Howth and Dun Laoghaire lifeboats. The sunflower raft could not have been successfully undertaken without the support of the Commissioners of Irish Lights, the Irish Naval Service, the Irish Air Corps (to whom we are grateful for the photograph) or Aer Lingus (who sponsored the associated prize draw). As well as the Dublin appeal a number of other towns and cities are currently organising appeals to fund big lifeboats..