FORTHCOMING EVENTS We regret that we are unable to include notices of forthcoming events in THE LIFEBOAT. Although we appreciate fully the benefits of obtaining advance publicity for fundraising events the sheer number involved would soon swamp the journal.

There are some 2,000 Branches and Guilds and if, for example, we were to include one event a month from each, the quarterly journal would need to list some 6,000 events. Even in a barely-readable type size this would occupy more pages than are available in the entire journal! It would be invidious to select just a few events and to exclude others and so we must continue the present policy, which is to report as many fundraising events as possible immediately after they have taken place.

Deadlines for copy are given in each issue of the journal, and we make every effort to include all reports received in time.Seven-year-old Sally Manners, daughter of Morpeth ladies' guild's honorary secretary, organised her own coffee morning for the guild and raised a splendid £79.

Sally was assisted by her friend Olivia Clerey. For safety reasons they did not make the coffee but served it (at lOp a cup) washed up and generally supervised proceedings. A bring and buy stall was also manned by children.

Pictured are (from left to right, rear) Olivia Clerey and Sally Manners with Imogen Clerey in the foreground.COUPLES took to the floor at Henley Town Hall for a tea dance in aid of the RNLI. With the encouragement of master of ceremonies, Ronnie Manns, the dancers quickstepped, waltzed and tangoed to live music. Between the dancing everyone sat down to afternoon tea laid on by the Henley-on-Thames branch and £125 was raised from a very enjoyable afternoon.

TWO successful fundraising events were held by Evesham ladies' guild in the autumn of 1992 - a fashion extravaganza in Evesham Arts Centre and a coffee morning in the Evesham Hotel (by invitation of the Jenkinson family). Together the events raised £2,200.

ANOTHER successful year has been reported by Highcliffe branch, with £10,000 being forwarded to Headquarters in 1992. 1993 started well when a very successful Christmas Fayre raised £888.

FAMOUS Names were auctioned by the Fishguard and Goodwick ladies' guild, raising a splendid £1,842. Over a period of 12 months many famous people were asked to donate gifts for the auction, with items ranging from a Jaeger scarf to a radio donated by HM The Queen Mother.

TICKETS sold by Merthyr Tydf il branch for a trolley dash at a local Asda Superstore realised £1,600.

A FASHION show organised bytheVentnor and district branch at the town's Winter Gardens raised over £450.

THE AUTUMN coffee morning held by Bournemouth ladies' guild raised £505, and its annual bridge afternoon added another £437. A donation of £1,000, which is received annually from a charitable trust, added yet more funds and by the end of September 1992 the guild had raised £16,333.

KAY Magee of Maghera branch, organised an all day Open House at her home and raised the outstanding sum of £800.

GUILDFORD Coastal Cruising Club joined with the musical group Rendezvous and the Guildf ord branch to entertain shoppers with Christmas carols one Saturday morning last December. The grand sum of £348.42 was collected in two hours singing in the Friary Centre, Guildford - a considerable tribute to all those taking part.

Twenty-one years of fundraising by Bude ladies' guild were celebrated with an anniversary lunch last year. Some 70 members attended and the Bude carnival prince and princess (two five-year-olds) presented the president, Miss Mary Francis, with a bouquet of flowers and cards bearing good wishes from the town. During the past 21 years the guild has raised more than £40,000.

FOR two hours on Christmas Eve a team of hand-bell ringers from Canvey Island branch pealed carols in the shopping arcade in Canvey Island. With aching wrists the ringers were delighted to raise £235 in the short time allotted to them.Seven into three does go...

Seven Nottinghamshire police officers took part in the 1992 Karrimor Three Peaks Yacht Race last June. First run in 1977 the aim is to climb the highest peaks in Wales, England and Scotland, travelling between the locations by yacht.

The race started in Barmouth, Wales in June and attracted entrants from all over the world. The teams sailed 350 miles and the runners completed 70 miles of road work and climbed 11,000 feet, including Snowden, Scafell and Ben Nevis.

In November the team organised an evening event to thank their sponsors and to present a cheque for £1,239.87 to Alan Randall, honorary secretary of Hucknall branch. A raffle resulted in a further £199 being donated to the RNLI.

Another Three Peaks ... with a difference Severe Gale Force 9 winds on August Bank holiday in 1992 did not deter over 40 adults and children from the Borthwen Caravan Site, Llwyngwril, Gwynedd undertaking the Borthwen Three Peaks race.

Running and walking from Llwyngwril to Fairbourne, climbing three peaks on the way, the children set the pace and nobody couldcatch them. Most importantly,£338.68 was raised for the Barmouth lifeboat.Two fit for words! Two very fit gentlemen each undertook separate events to raise money for Newport branch.

Sixteen-year-old Jeremy Chamberlain, a pupil at Rougemont School, completed a sponsored cycle ride from Newport to Southampton and raised £220. He also persuaded Sea Link to donate two ferry tickets to his fundraising drive. Jeremy later presented the cash and tickets to Mrs Daphne Patrick, chairman of Newport branch committee.

Mr Bewg, 52, ran the veteran road runners national championships full marathon last October in a time of 3 hours 34 minutes. Sponsorship money from this run and two previous half marathons has totalled £1,000. Splendid fundraising achievements from both gentlemen.

Doctor in the swim A sponsored swim by Doctor Richard Walton from Porthgwarra Cove, Land's End to Lamorna Cove, a distance of 5.2 miles, resulted in an amazing £3,500 for the Institution.

Doctor Walton from Windsor, an experienced middle-distance sea swimmer, was accompanied by a safety boat and completed the swim in 2 hours 50 minutes last September.Lymington lifeboat crew member Falcon Hawkins, together with three friends, raised £2,200 in sponsorship money for the RNLI by taking part in the 1992 Euro Auto Challenge organised by the European newspaper.

In an attempt to establish a new world record for driving in the shortest time through the 12 member countries of the EC, Falcon's team, driving a Vauxhall Carlton 3-litre GS, started the rally in Paris on 27 September and completed the challenge a week later in London.

Twenty-nine of the entrants dropped out through mechanical failure or fatigue and Falcon and his co-drivers (one of only three amateur teams taking part) finished 19th out of 36 overall and 9th out of 16 in the men's class.

They hope to take part in this year's challenge which will involve an even longer route - through Russia.

Pictured are the four drivers (from left to right) Falcon Hawkins, Vic Perfitt and his two sons Raoul and Jason outside the Lymington boathouse, together with the rally car and Lymington's Atlantic 21 lifeboat, Frank and Mary Atkinson.A BUFFET dance, held at Tolworth last October thanks to the generosity of Michael Fletcher who again arranged the venue and provided the flowers and food, raised £1,570 for Surbiton branch.

INSPECTION of the old minute book of Hull ladies' guild has confirmed that the guild has been raising money for 40 years. Last year the sale of souvenirs and various events ranging from a bridge lunch, a young people's ball, coffee mornings and donations raised over £5,680.

A PUNCH party at the Villa Rothsay Hotel (by kind permission of the Ankers family) in November raised £739 for Cowes ladies' guild from the sale of tickets, raffles and an auction of a book and a doll.

THE Coleraine/Castlerock branch is going from strength to strength and, together with other successful fundraising efforts, the Stableford competititon held at Castlerock golf club raised a splendid £2,821.

GRAHAM Moates and Justin Hawkins, hydrographic surveyors at Wimpol of Swindon, cycled the entire distance from John O'Groats to Land's End and raised £1,008.30 for the lifeboat service. Averaging 55 miles a day it took the two men 18 days to complete the journey.

REGULARS at The Greyhound Inn, Reigate and Redhill branch area, persuaded one of their number to have his head shaved to help the lifeboats. Sponsorship and a collection raised over £240.

THE IMPRESSIVE Great Hall at Bisham Abbey was the setting for Beaconsf ield branch's Trafalgar Night Dinner. As a result of the generosity of members and supporters the lifeboat service will benefit to the tune of £1,600.

DURING the 1991/92 financial year Kensington branch registered a record breaking total of over £21,000. This included a magnificent £9,256 collected in Lifeboat Week.

DESPITE the recession the RNLI Christmas shop in Ramsey, Isle of Man took £5,602 in its 12 days of trading. It was manned by a hard working rota of ladies from the Ramsey guild who were very fortunate to be lent a vacant shop in a prime position through the courtesy of the owner, Barrie Jones.

TERRY Hall's stop-smoking sponsorship has resulted in a grand total of £550. Terry (Nobby) of the City of Derby branch has donated £150 of this amount to the RNLI.

DURING 1992 Mrs Joan Getty made arrangements for Bangor ladies' guild to sell souvenirs to members of East Down yacht club and Pat McCarroll, chairman of the guild, is most grateful for the £940 raised.Message in a bottle During 1992 Fergus Bolger, newly appointed chairman of Arklow branch launched himself off to local primary schools to spread the word about the lifeboat service, with special emphasis on Arklow lifeboat.

It was during his question-and-answer sessions with the schoolchildren that Fergus thought up the idea of a 'message in a bottle' competition - pupils would put their own message in a bottle which would then be launched from Arklow.

The winner would be the 'owner' of the bottle which was retrieved the furthest distance from Arklow.

For an entry fee of 50p each child completed a message form and when the bottles had been collected (70 in all) they were launched but to sea during a lifeboat exercise.

One week later the first replies came back from Rosslare, but as time passed replies came from further afield and Suzanne Byrne was the lucky youngster whose bottle had travelled the greatest distance - all the way to Black Rock Beach, in Brighton, Sussex.

Suzanne's prize was £10 and a visit to Arklow lifeboat house to meet the cox-Nicholas White, aged 19, an indefatigable fundraiser for the Ivybridge and district branch, is pictured outside No. 10 Downing Street at the end of his latest moneyspinning venture.Sponsored by donations on a 'get-asfar- as-you-can' simulated break-out from Channings Wood prison in south Devon, Nick managed to get as far as Derby in 24 hours. It would have been further - to the continent - but for a bomb scare in central London which delayed his journey and led to him missing his flight from Heathrow.

Nevertheless Nick managed to meet up with BBC Radio One's Tommy Vance, Dave Lee Travis and Philip Schofield and also enlisted the support of John Stapleton, presenter of 'Watchdog'.

Singing along for the RNLI No fewer than eleven members of The Sheringham Shantymen are past or present members of the RNLI, and with another three auxiliary coastguards in their ranks it is hardly surprising that the RNLI figures highly as a beneficiary of their efforts.

The money which they raise from performances and from the sale of their audio tape (a second is due out later this year) goes to charity - and 10% of that is destined for the RNLI.

Their second year of operation resulted in the RNLI receiving £400, and with the new tape on the way hopes are even higher for the next year of shanty-singing.

The Sheringham Shantymen can be contacted via their Vice Chairman and Press Officer, Tony Sadler, 10 Hooks Hill Road, Sheringham, Norfolk NR26 8NL, who can also arrange for the sale of their tapes - which are £6 each including post and packing. Cheques should be made payable to The Sheringham Shantymen'.In Brief SINCE Beckenham branch was re-formed four years ago its five committee members have organised a variety of events, including a coffee party whichraised £846 in one-and-a-half hours.

The branch also sold over £460 worth of Christmas cards.

THANKS to the Walthamstow newspapers Guardian and Gazette target bonds scheme, 24,350 bonds worth £315 were collected by members of the Loughton and district branch.

The money will be used to buy a full set of protective equipment (waterproof trousers, jacket, boots and lifejacket) for a crew member on the Cromer all-weather lifeboat.

ANOTHER successful year was reported at the AGM of the North Sunderland ladies' guild.

The harbour fete raised £ 10,644 and sales in the shop realised £18,984 and these, together with the results of other events, enabled the guild to send a record £29,000 to the Institution in 1992.

MORE than 400 teenagers bopped the night away at the Twelfth Night Ball organised by Glasgow North branch at the Forte Crest Hotel.

A mixture of Scottish country dancing and disco at this very successful event realised a net amount of £5,940.83.

THE CUAN Bar in Strangford, County Down held its annual New Year's Day swim, attracting 33 entrants and raising over £1,000 for Banbridge branch.

THE COFFERS of Bishop's Waltham branch were unexpectedly swelled by £75 which was handed to them by a young naval officer. He had won a private bet and then decided to donate his winnings to the RNLI. The total amount raised by the branch last year was over £7,000.Instant test An emergency call interrupted a presentation ceremony at Hunstanton lifeboat station and those present were given a live demonstration of the crew in action.

Biggleswade Round Tablers had raised £1,000 from a sponsored row on the River Ouse in September and the members of the inshore lifeboat crew were about to show off their new waterproof suits which the money had bought when they had to launch the lifeboat to rescue a windsurfer who was trying to swim to the shore off Hunstanton lighthouse.

The lifeboat reached him within six minutes and brought him safely back to shore, cold and exhausted but otherwise unharmed.

Wine quiz The village hall in Henf ield, West Sussex was the venue for a wine quiz evening organised by the local branch.

The quiz master was Charles Metcalfe, a wine expert from the Homes and Gardens magazine and the presenter of a television wine programme. One hundred and forty people attended and were seated in tens at tables. They were then asked to sample eight different wines during the course of the evening. After each wine Charles Metcalfe asked three questions relating to each wine and marks were awarded for a correct answer.

As the evening progressed the atmosphere became more 'relaxed' but the competition grew fiercer. Indeed, going into the last round of questions two tables tied for first place and it took three tiebreak questions before a winner was declared. All concerned then agreed to share the first prize - a case of quality wine donated by King and Barnes Brewery, who also supplied the wine for the quiz, At the conclusion of the quiz each participant received more wine together with a selection of 22 cheeses. Needless to say everyone agreed the whole event had been an enormous success, raising some £913 for Henfield branch.

The last and the first December 1992 saw Hitchin and district branch holding its last fundraising event of the year - the annual punch, pies and carols evening at Mr and Mrs John Perkins' tithe barn. Over 300 prizes were donated for the tombola and a magnificent £700 was raised as a result of this very popular event.

The first event in 1993, an afternoon tea, took place on a very cold day in Church House, raising just over £100.A good start Nuneaton and District branch started the new fundraising year with a flag day in the town centre.

A good turnout of committee, members and local Round Tablers enabled a 33-strong rota of collectors to be out and about during the day resulting in a splendid collection of £1,052.28.

Mrs Jenny Bates and Margaret James manned the charity stall in the market place and sold £139.40 worth of souvenirs, as well as making £129.20 on a raffle - resulting in a grand total for the day of £1,320.88.

Dynamic duo At the end of January 1993, T. Robert Wieck (22) and Rachel Wieck (18) performed a recital of piano and viola music at Edington Priory Church.

The audience was treated to a selection of short solo and duo pieces, including music by Ravel, Brahms, Mozart and Faure, as well as two pieces composed by Robert himself.

Robert and Rachel raised the grand sum of £330 for Westbury branch, and are available to do similar concerts elsewhere to raise money for the RNLI.Newbiggin lifeboat station is situated within the area of Wansbeck district council, and it is the custom for the civic head of the council to nominate a charity appeal during his year of office. During 1991/92 the duty of civic head fell to Councillor Jack Dodds of Newbiggin.

Jack is from an old Newbiggin family,his grandfather James Dent was a crew member of the lifeboat in the early 1900's and his uncle Thomas Dent was a coxswain of the Augustus and Laura and its replacement the Richard Ashley. Not surprising therefore that Jack chose the RNLI for his nominated charity.

During his year in office he organised many fundraising events and a total of £6,334 was finally raised and presented to Newbiggin branch.

Pictured with Jack (centre) are John Robinson, chairman of Newbiggin branch (left) and Stan Green, station honorary secretary.

Christmas shopping spree! The Christmas shop manned by members of the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton ladies' guild for just seven weeks, resulted in an astounding total sales figure of £31,882.40.

In at the deep end Two retired businessmen from Ross-on- Wye dived in to the Wye Lea Leisure Centre pool - and raised £319 in sponsorship money as part of the Swimsafe 92 appeal.

Bill Petts (67), who has a replacement hip, swam an impressive 50 miles and collected £180. Stuart Rosser (66) topped it up with £139 by completing 17 miles.

The swim was completed over a period of ten weeks..