Around the world More than 200 invited guests supported the annual autumn party organised by Woodbridge and District branch which was held at Woodbridge School on Saturday 24 November.

After enjoying refreshments they bought souvenirs and viewed the excellent lifeboat models on the Lifeboat Enthusiasts' Society stall.

As the main item of the evening they listened, enthralled, to a splendid talk and slide show presentation by famous local sailor, David Cowper, who circumnavigated the world - including the North West Passage - in the ex-RNLI lifeboat Mabel E.

Holland.

Generous support from the guests meant that ticket and souvenir sales, plus a raffle and flower auction, resulted in more than £1,200 being raised. In brief ANOTHER successful Skittle Evening was held at the Farmhouse Inn, Brixington. A raffle and a cuddly toy auction added to the jollifications and£ 105 was raised forExmouth and Budleigh Salterton Ladies' guild.

A CHEESE and Wine party held at The Jockey Club raised a splendid £ 1,! 50 for Newmarket branch.

A DRAW for three bottles of Martell cognac, kindly donated by Martell, and held by Wo- Iverhampton branch raised £1,672.

A PLOUGHMAN'S Lunch and Garden Party held on 4 August at the home of Norman Patchton, a member of Broadstone branch, raised more than £300 for the Swanage lifeboat appeal. Members also took the opportunity to celebrate the Queen Mother's 90th birthday.

A SOUVENIR stall run by Hucknall branch in Hucknall High Street raised £215 by way of donations and sales.

FOR THE past 15 years the chairman of Norwich Ladies' guild has allowed her home to be used for the annual general meeting.

However, this year Mrs Warren and her husband kindly held a money making event, a Wine and Canape evening. This event, much enjoyed by members, friends and supporters, resulted in £775.55 being raised.

TO CELEBRATE the 25th anniversary of Marske Ladies' guild, a dinner was held at The Ship, Marske, Cleveland. The guild organise many varied activities and continue to enjoy success in the small seaside town.

THE Holyhead and District Ladies' guild had a busy and successful 1990, raising £11,500. One of the varied fund raising events the guild organised was an open day at the Penrhos Nature Reserve in May which realised over £ 1,000, despite the excitement of a burst water main and a lifeboat flare setting fire to grass. A grand show The annual Havering August Bank Holiday Show attracted crowds of more than 30,000 people over two days, and Hornchurch and Rainham branch had a prime site selling souvenirs and Christmas cards.

Branch members also ran four games of fun and chance, sold Volvo raffle tickets and manned a pictorial display about the work of the lifeboats.

This display took the form of a 16ft mobile caravan complete with TV and video and was kindly provided with the help of Beadles Motors of Dartford, Kent, who also loaned the branch a brand new Land Rover to tow the vehicle to and from the show ground.

A short distance from the stand was an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and here there was also an important connection with the RNLI. Mr Chris Butcher, chairman of the branch, had on display information and photographs relating to the rescue by Margate lifeboat of Pilot Officer Richard Hillary (a descendant of Sir William Hillary), a story told in the Autumn issue of THE LIFEBOAT, and this, together with an RAF Spitfire bearing the exact markings as Richard Hillary had on his plane, proved fascinating to many people at the show.

A very successful two days for the branch, raising £1,605 for lifeboat funds.

Last date for copy for the Spring 1991 issue is 11 February 1991. Model societies The Southern Model Lifeboat Society was formed in July 1990, and has already presented its first donation to the RNLI.

As one of the society's models is of the new Tyne class lifeboat Hermione Lady Colwyn it was fitting that the first appeal to be supported was Shoreham. Tony Olliff from the society was pleased to be able to hand over a cheque for £200 to Dave Wainwright at Shoreham lifeboat station. (See also Letters page this issue) Another model society, the Coventry Model Boat Club, has also been busy displaying its boats at various venues and raising money.

Great fun was had at the Town and Country Festival at Stoneleigh during the summer where the club displayed 60 scale lifeboats on a static site and on an outdoor pool.

Several fun races and games took place on the pool and the public were given the chance to steer two of the radio-controlled boats.

A cheque for £123.61 was presented to Brenda Dudley, honorary secretary of Coventry branch, bringing the total raised by the club last year to £300.

Chuting stars Two brave lifeboat supporters floated gently down to earth after jumping 2,000ft from an aircraft, hoping that their parachutes would open as intended! David Beck, who works at Wandsworth Town Hall and had to lose a great deal of weight in order to reach the maximum allowed of 12st 71b, made his descent safely - albeit into the wrong field - and raised an impressive £1,100.

Joanne Walton from Wigan also completed her jump successfully and with enthusiastic support from her family and friends, at home and abroad, raised a splendid £308. Busy ladies The Skegness Ladies' guild has not rested on its laurels since the arrival of The Lincolnshire Poacher (see naming ceremony report, this issue) and the end of the Lincolnshire lifeboat appeal.

During the first five weeks of the financial year they have raised £1,282, starting with a completely new venture in October - a modern sequence and old time dance at the Embassy Centre in Skegness.

This proved a financial and social success and made a profit of £680. When they paused for breath the dancers were also able to do their Christmas shopping at the souvenir stall.

Treasure Trove, a sale of new and nearly new household goods brought in £230 and a coffee morning raised a further £372.

Altogether an excellent start to the new fund raising year. Starting at the top Lt Cdr Brian Miles, director of the Institution, recently threw himself off the top of a building - not because of the pressures of running the RNLI but to raise funds for it!.

Cdr Miles and his wife Anne were taking part in a sponsored 24-hour abseil, organised by the Reed Business Publishing Group, and through the good offices of Frank Harrison, honorary secretary of Bexhill on Sea branch, the RNLI had been chosen as one of four charities to benefit from the event.

Cdr and Mrs Miles were among the first to descend the 11 Oft from the top of Quadrant House in Sutton, Surrey, headquarters of the company, closely followed by Michael Ashley and Ann Wilkins, respective regional organisers for the south east of England and Greater London.

All the participants agreed it was a 'never to be forgotten experience' especially when it resulted in around £7,000 being raised for the Shoreham Harbour lifeboat appeal.

Young at heart For the last two summers 91-year-old Mrs Olga Noble-Mathews has been busy boosting funds for Shaldon branch.

Seated in her wheelchair and dressed in period costume as pan of the 1785 celebrations of the village, Mrs Noble-Mathews has sold thousands of Volvo raffle tickets to holidaymakers.

The active senior citizen, who lives in London and teaches etiquette to foreign diplomats, spends every summer in Shaldon and has so far sold £2,000-worth of tickets.

In Brief DESPITE driving wind and rain Tonbridge branch managed to set up a stand and awning on a free pitch in the town's open-air market.

Costume jewellery and Volvo draw tickets were sold and over £100 was netted for lifeboat funds.

THE GOOSE Island Syncopators were the entertainers at Jazz on the Quay, which took place at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Two hundred people, including members of Bernbridge lifeboat crew and visiting yachtsmen, enjoyed the music and barbecue and £350 was raised for the Seaview and St Helens branch. In addition the sale of souvenirs amounted to £222.

CARAVANNERS at Borthwen caravan site held their own Three Peaks race last summer.

Entrants, who included young children and senior citizens, had to propel their craft, whatever size or shape, under their own power on a course from the site to Fairbourne Beach, a distance of two-and-a-half miles. En route they had to beach and scale three 'peaks'.

Nineteen craft took part and apart from being hilarious entertainment for competitors and spectators the event raised £238 for Barmouth branch. The caravanners hope to make it an annual event. All at sea for AGM Last year Backwell and District branch travelled abroad to hold their annual general meeting (at their own expense) and raised over £250 in the process.

Several committee members sailed in three yachts to Cherbourg where they were joined by the rest of the branch who arrived by P&O ferry.

Thanks to the wholehearted support of the ferry company, members were able to sell Volvo raffle tickets to passengers and explain the role of the lifeboat service.

During their stay in Cherbourg, many British yachts were visited and tickets sold to very willing crew members. The AGM was held in the Cherbourg yacht club.

The branch are planning to make this the forerunner of an annual Yachtsmen's Lifeboat Supporters' rally, to be held in September each year. Young enterprise Thanks to the efforts of three Southampton children the Southampton Lifeboat Board was able to send an extra £11.69 to headquarters.

Peter Calvert, Ben Roberts and Andrew Long, all aged nine and from Highfield Middle School, decided to enter the Hampshire Technology Fair and thereby also help the RNLI.

Peter's own description of the entry is as follows - 'My friends Ben, Andrew and me decided to enter the Hampshire Technology fair. We entered a robot and made it point to a lifeboat money box. It took us about a month to make it. You could make it raise its arm to point to the money box and flash its eyes. We used the lifeboat because we wanted to help save more people's lives at sea.' Although the entry did not win, the RNLI benefited from such enterprising youngsters. Pounds from puds On Driffield Show Day, Tryton Foods were cooking frozen Yorkshire puddings with onion gravy - and more than 900 visitors sampled these for a donation of 20p to a charity.

To the surprise of the two Driffield Ladies' guild members manning the souvenir stall the sum of £192.75 was presented to them at the request of Mr Hilditch, managing director of Tryton Foods.

Fishy goings-on The children of St Laurence's Church of England Infants School in Ludlow decided to devote their harvest festival to the sea.

Each class had a large cardboard cut-out fish and the children brought coins to make the scales. They alsopaid 1 Op a time to'fish' for tins (of fish, of course!) donated by parents.

As a result of their efforts a total of £98.74 was presented to Ludlow branch.

In memory Mr and Mrs Peter Lobb of Crafthole, Cornwall, have donated £500 to the RNLI in memory of their young son Christopher, who was tragically killed in a car accident. The donation was on their behalf and of the relatives and friends of Christopher, who had such a love of the sea.

On a fine summer's evening in August the Plymouth lifeboat sailed across to Cawsand and secured alongside the waterside steps in Garrett Street where many had gathered for the occasion.

On board the lifeboat Mr and Mrs Lobb presented the cheque to Martin Giles, chairman of the Rame Peninsula branch, who in turn gave them an RNLI shield with an engraved plate donated by Lidstone and Dolton, the Plymouth engravers.

At the request of Mr and Mrs Lobb the branch has arranged for the money to go to a Cornish lifeboat and, as a result, the Falmouth lifeboat now has a new VHF radio telephone, It was also fitting that the branch presented a special certificate of thanks to young Jonjo Fowle of Torpoint, one of Chris's friends, who generously donated a large portion of his pocket money in memory of his friend.

The evening will long be remembered by the family and friends of Christopher, and by his brother who had been badly injured in the accident and who was ,' brought from the hospital where he had just come out of five weeks intensive care. The Latvian connection In 1936 the Latvian ship Helena Faulbaums was wrecked on the island of Belnahua, off Luing on the west coast of Scotland. Four survivors were rescued by the Islay lifeboat and Coxswain Peter MacPhee was awarded the Latvian Order of the Three Stars.

Last year Mr and Mrs Hilary King, who live on Luing, were invited to Riga to attend the premiere of a film of the shipwreck made by a Latvian film director. Much of the footage for the film was taken by members of the Latvian yacht Bravo which sailed to Luing for the purpose last August.

One of the survivors of the 1936 wreck is still alive and the Kings were able to meet him at the film premiere.

On their return home Mr King gave a slideshow of the trip to Riga in the village hall at Cullipool and the gross takings of £36.21 were donated to the RNLI.

The film producers are planning an English language version of the film which they hope might be of interest to UK television companies.

A ferry good idea When the Sealink ferry MV Felicity went into service on the Rosslare to Fishguard route in the Spring of 1990, John Boyce, a second steward on the ferry and also a crew member of Rosslare Harbour lifeboat, obtained permission to install collecting boxes throughout the ship.

Every fortnight he organises the emptying of the boxes and staggers home to the family with the bags of cash. It takes his family, wife Bridget, daughter Patricia aged 11 and son Sean aged 7, at least two evenings to count and bag the money and hand it over to a delighted local honorary treasurer for banking.

Over the six month period from May to October the boxes have yielded a resounding £2,520. In Brief THE SOUVENIR shop at Aldeburgh continues to thrive and realised a splendid £25,000 from sales last year for Aldeburgh and Dis- i trict Ladies' guild.

A SPONSORED slim by Mrs Elaine Mann raised £170 for the Southwold and Dunwich fund raising branch when she lost two-and-ahalf stone in four months.

STAFF at Gateway superstore in Bridgend undertook a sponsored walk from Bridgend to Southerndown, a journey of about ten miles, resulting in £ 1,500 being raised from sponsorship and a collection in the store organised by local branches of Bridgend and Porthcawl Ladies' guild.

THE Stokesley and Ayton District Ladies' guild have been presented with a £500 donation from Brent Walker Brewing and Trading and Steve Mongan of the Francis Hotel Group to mark the Dunkirk anniversary trip made by Mr Mongan Senior, who had been rescued by lifeboat from Dunkirk in 1940.

BRIAN Cane from Minehead, who has won the Gardener of the Year title in a national competition held by Gardening News, has been opening his garden to the public for the last three summers, inviting donations in aid of the RNLI. This year's total came to a splendid £496 which was presented to Minehead station branch.

Naval boost The Royal Naval Supply and Transport Service celebrated the 25th anniversary of its formation as a single supply organisation last year. Fund raising events were held at all 40 of its establishments throughout the UK and abroad with proceeds being donated to local charities.

The money raised in aid of the RNLI was the result of a grand prize draw on board RFA Argus and a cheque for £4,805 was presented to Peter Holness, corporate fund raising manager, by John Baugh, director general of RNSTS at their headquarters at Ensleigh in Bath. Record booty Henley-on-Thames branch held its 10th annual car boot sale last September and surpassed all previous totals to achieve a record one-day take of £6,597.64.

This record-breaking amount was achieved by parking 371 boots (attached to their relevant cars), collecting 50p each from at least 2.000 buyers' cars and by the several thousand pedestrians who converged on the site giving generously to the RNLI in a wide variety of collecting boxes, buckets, tins and anything else which would hold money.

The ladies of the committee and their friends (including some very useful men!), manned the refreshment marquee and produced sandwiches from some 40 loaves, with 200 filled rolls and innumerable cakes, buns, pies, etc.

Tea, coffee and soft drinks flowed all day and 1,000 hot dogs were prepared by two New Zealand visitors who were roped in to help on the day. Christmas cards, souvenirs and car raffle tickets helped the grand total.

Pumps to the rescue Eastbourne lifeboat station have been presented with a cheque for £600 by Ken Smith, managing director of PDF Pumps.

The local engineering company is a memberof the Alfa Laval Group, recent winnerof the NatWest engineering marketing awards and the prize money was distributed to companies within the group. POP Pumps decided to donate their share to a worthwhile local cause.

Captain Shearer, station honorary secretary, and Graham Cole, coxswain of Eastbourne lifeboat, accepted the generous donation which it is hoped will go towards the purchase of a bulldozer needed to keep the end of the slipway clear of silt and gravel.

Supping up During his seagoing days, Richard Allen's party trick was to stand on his head and drink half-a-pint of beer! Over the years Richard, who is editor of the magazine Safety at Sea, has very occasionally repeated the trick, the last time two years ago in Hamburg just prior to his 50th birthday.

Whilst on another visit to Hamburg last year his friends and colleagues were adamant that it could not be done, one said it could, bets were placed and then the person concerned withdrew to the cries of the disbelievers' 'we told you so'.

Seeing the money on the table Richard said that if it was doubled and donated to the RNLI he would come out of'retirement" and prove that it could be done.

With that it was down with his head, up with his feet and the beer was upped, resulting in £115 being donated to lifeboat funds. On their bikes Three young people set off on their motor cycles to visit 55 lifeboat stations from Berwick on Tweed to Newhaven in Sussex.

Graham Wade from Cambridge, Stewart Abrey and his sister Diana from Melbourn Royston, covered 1,600 miles and raised a grand total of £3,400 for lifeboat funds.

Their reception at each stop was marvellous and they received a great deal of help and hospitality from all the honorary secretaries and crew members at the stations they visited.

Open for business Record crowds flocked to Hoylake lifeboat station on its open day and a record sum of £10,000 was raised for the Hoylake lifeboat appeal.

Television sports commentator Elton Welsby opened proceedings with his children Christopher, aged 12, and Laura.

The appeal was also boosted by a generous donation of £5.000 by the Hoylake and West Kirby Round Table. An estimated 20,000 people enjoyed traditional events such as Punch and Judy and rides on a model steam train on the promenade but the star event was the local lifeboat staging an air-sea rescue with a Wessex helicopter from RAF Valley, Anglesey.

It was the last open day for Mary Gabriel, as she has now been replaced by the new Mersey class lifeboat Lady ofHilbre.

Fourth time lucky A fourth donation of £ 10.000 has been presented to the RNLI by Western Geophysical/ Shell UK.

The money was raised during a safety campaign involving crew members of the research vessel Discoverv, and will be used to cover the cost of the davit for the boarding boat at Humber lifeboat station.

Copy for the Fund Raisers section of the Spring issue must be received by Monday 11 February 1991..