Out in the open around the country! Once again the RNLI will be opening its facilities to visitors this year, enabling them to gain a firsthand impression of how the Institution works and the quality of the boats and equipment.

A second national Open Day is being held on the late May Bank Holiday, with most stations around the country open on Sunday 26 May. Please check before travelling to a lifeboat station however as a small number will not be open (usually for technical reasons) and a few may beopening on other days over the weekend.

The RNLI's Inshore lifeboat centre at East Cowes will be opening its doors on Friday 16 and Saturday 17 August, hava ing missed out on one of its biannual openings because of building work.

The ILC is a very different place to the one seen at the last open days in 1992. Many of the old buildings have been demolished to make way for the new facilities opened in the summer of 1995. The centre will be open each day from 10am to 5pm with plenty for all the family to see and do.

Visitors will be able to tour the working areas and see how the Atlantic 75 and D class lifeboats are made and repaired.

There will be regular displays on the water, including righting demonstrations, a sail-past of different classes of lifeboats and a helicopter fly-past.

The children will be kept busy with Storm force activities, a treasure hunt and dressing up competitions.

Plans are afoot to hold at least one Atlantic 75 naming ceremony during the open days.Show time! Although attendance figures at the London International Boat Show in January were 7% down on 1995, the RNLI's stand again proved to be a great success.

The stand, a striking diorama featuring an Atlantic 75 lifeboat, generated much interest and many compliments from visitors.

Some £4,800 worth of insignia was sold during the show, a 20% increase on 1995, and a fifth Sea Safety booklet, containing safety guidelines for jet skiers, was also launched at the show - as was SEAREM, the first international database of sea related emergencies, which has been co-ordinated by the Institution to enable safety resources and advice to be targeted more accurately.

Relief D Class lifeboats Cetrek and Lawn/lite were named at the show, with Jim Davidson christening Cetrek on the main pool in front of many spectators and press photographers.

Also at the show Lord Wakeham, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission and member of the RNLI committee of management, presented the Institution's Public Relations Awards to the Birmingham Evening Mail, Michael Buerk and the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force helicopter crews.'Can you imagine something half as big again as a double-decker bus which could be driven off the roof of hava 20ft high building at 30mph, land on the ground below and then carry on, without any damage to crew or structure? That is virtually what we are expecting a Severn tO dO ' David Morgan, Head of Naval Architecture and Engineering NEWSPOINT It is no secret that there have been some teething troubles with the new generation of fast afloat lifeboats - there were problems with the engines of the Trent class and more recently there have been a rash of minor problem and a couple of more serious defects with the larger Severns.

These problems should be seen in perspective. Stornoway's Severn, for example, was damaged when she fell awkwardly from a 7m sea while travelling at high speed - and do not be fooled into thinking that water is soft, it is not. At that speed it is more like concrete.

The Severn is 55ft long and weighs more than 37 tons. 25 knots is a little under 30mph. Can you imagine something half as big again as a double-decker bus which could be driven off the roof of a 20ft high building at SOmph, land on the ground below and then carry on, without any damage to crew or structure? That is virtually what we are expecting a Severn to do - and what, given a fair crack of the whip it will do.

The RNLI is not complacent and it is working as hard as it can to solve what are in reality relatively minor problems. It would be only fair to allow it to do so without being subjected to uninformed criticism, particularly in some sections of the press. One newspaper for example would have its readers believe that the Severn class programme was to be scrapped - and this despite being categorically told otherwise! Unfortunately it is never easy properly to put across the horrific conditions under which lifeboats are expected to operate and the Institution's genuine desire to provide the very best and totally reliable equipment to people who have no experience of the sea.

The engine problems with the Trents were quickly resolved - as everyone expected they would be - and once the problems with the Severns have been properly identified they too will be solved.

If the manufacturer of a motor car frequently needs to recall early models after spending millions on a design which essentially makes small improvements to a basically simple machine it is asking a great deal to expect ground-breaking, state-of-the-art machines to be perfect straight out of the box.

The RNLI's lifeboats work in one of the most hostile environments known; they must achieve hitherto unheard-of speeds in quite appalling conditions. That they are not yet perfect the RNLI freely acknowledges, but some of the best brains in the business are aiming to make them as perfect as possible, as soon as possible. Nothing less will do.Crews around the world Toshiba's computer division is to sponsor one RNLI crew member on each of five legs of the BT Global Challenge Round The World Yacht Race aboard its boat Wave Warrior.

The race starts in September 1996, when the 14 identical 67ft boats will leave Southampton on a ten-month 30,000 mile voyage calling at Rio de Janeiro, Wellington, Sydney, Cape Town and Boston. RNLI crew members, many of whom have shown interest in taking part, will be nominated by their stations, and a shortlist of 10 will be put through their paces afloat and ashore.

The race is also a good fundraising opportunity, and the aim is to fund a lifeboat from sponsorship of crew members.

Individuals are being asked to sponsor a crew member at £1 per thousand miles, and companies at £1 per hundred miles.

The legs are between three and seven thousand miles long.

Pledges and donations are already being taken on Freephone (0800) 413763.Record year for lifeboat launchesAll-weather lifeboats launched 2,369 times, saved 638 lives, landed a further 737 people and brought ashore 1,588 more. They saved £29m of property during 4,844 hours at sea. Inshore lifeboats launched 3,739 times, saved The Institution's lifeboats had their busiest year ever in 1995 with provisional statistics showing no less than 7,272 launches and 1,630 lives saved during the year - an average of 19 launches and 4 lives saved every day.757 lives, landed 642 people and brought ashore 1,828 others, while saving £5m worth of property and spending 4,170 hours at sea.

A breakdown of the causes of incidents shows that sail pleasure craft accounted for 1,614 services (26%), power pleasure craft for 1,275 (21%), persons in the water for 785 (13%), fishing vessels for 738 (12%), and manual pleasure craft for 572 (9%).

The busiest month was August, during which lifeboats launched an average of 50 times a day.

Sunday 27 August was the busiest single day ever, with 115 services. The highest previous number for one day, was 22 July 1990, when lifeboats launched 106 times.Sea Safety Initiative update The Sea Safety Liaison Working Group, which consists of the Coastguard Agency, Marine Safety Agency, Royal Yachting Association, Royal Life Saving Society, British Marine Industries Federation and the RNLI, has distributed over a million copies of its four safety guidelines booklets in its first year of operation.

A fifth booklet, containing safety guidelines for jet skiers, was launched at the London Boat Show in January and is included with this issue of THE LIFEBOAT.

The RNLI is also co-ordinating the setting up of 'SEAREM', which will provide the first database of all sea-related emergency statistics. This will enable all the organisations involved, not least the RNLI, to put their resources to the best possible use and target sea safety awareness campaigns more effectively.Jewellery appeal Over £254,000 has been raised since the jewellery appeal's inception in 1987.

Organiser Roy Norgrove has worked tirelessly on the Institution's behalf, and last year over £20,000 was raised through sales of broken or unwanted jewellery and similar items.

If you have any old jewellery, watches, medals, silver items or small objets d'art that you no longer want or need send them to RNLI Headquarters, marked for the attention of Roy Norgrove, RNLI Jewellery appeal organiser.

The RNLI and the Lottery There has been much discussion about the funds available to charities from the National Lottery, and many RNLI supporters are keen to know whether the Institution can benefit from this source.

The RNLI's position is that it views the National Lottery Charity Board as a charitable trust, which is independent of government control and, as with all charitable trusts, a potential source of voluntary income.

It is therefore identifying areas in which it can receive support and will be making an application as soon, and as often, as the appropriate opportunities arise.

Although the RNLI does not fall into the Lottery Charities Board's priority category at the moment the board does have The Lifeboat on tape THE LIFEBOAT is also available on audio tape in conjunction with Talking Newspapers.

The audio tape version is free, although recipients may wish to make a donation to cover the additional costs.

To receive THE LIFEBOAT on a C90 audio tape please write to the Editor, THE LIFEBOAT, RNLI West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset BH15 1HZ.

a duty to examine every bid, and the RNLI could be treated as a special case or deferred to a future priority category. Bids for funds far exceed the Board's ability to make grants, but although there is no guarantee of success the Institution must try.

The RNLI will continue to discuss the equitable distribution of funds with the Government and the organisers. In particular it would like the public to be more aware that buying National Lottery tickets or scratch cards is a very inefficient way to contribute to charity and should be viewed as an additional, not alternative means of support for chosen causes.

The RNLI, with the Chatham Historic Dockyard, has already made a successful bid to the Lottery Heritage Fund for £355,000 towards establishing the National Lifeboat Collection at Chatham on the grounds that the RNLI could not finance such a project out of funds which had been raised for the sole purpose of saving life at sea..