'Oh, we'll be there from about eight, see you when you arrive' said the cheerful voice on the other end of the phone. As I put the handset down I reflected on the distance some of those 'we's would have to travel to be at Chatham by Sam, and began to realise the significance of the word 'enthusiast' in the title of the Lifeboat Enthusiasts Society.

Here was a group of a dozen or so people, from all walks of life and with ages spanning three generations, who would drive from places as far away as Reading and Essex in the early hours of a chilly October morning to help maintain the historic lifeboats now on display in Chatham Historic Dockyard. Not once, not every now and again, but every other Saturday - and many of the days in between.

When the collection first went to the old Number 4 covered slip at the historic dockyard the present display was just a dream, but even resting on the newly-laid pea-shingle the boats clearly needed cleaning, maintenance - and some cosmetic work.

Almost exactly three years before our visit the RNLI's Deputy Director Ray Kipling, who had been heavily involved in getting the boats safely to Chatham (most of them from the by-then closed museum at Bristol), had met with members of the Lifeboat Enthusiasts Society at the dockyard to see whether anyone would volunteer to help with the day-to-day work of looking after the boats.

One of the hands raised at that meeting belonged to Steve Renyard, the enthusiastic voice on the phone who'd been my initial contact, and soon he had gathered together a band of keen workers from a wide area around Chatham. Not everyone is a member of the LBES, but all of them can lay claim to the term 'enthusiast'.

Three years down the road Steve could sit in a warm portacabin looking out over an impressive display and share a tea and banter with most of those same people - give or take some later arrivals and a few losses as people moved too far away to travel regularly.

Now they could look back on the early days and laugh - their equipment had been 'a couple of tins of Brasso and a bucket' and lunch had been eaten sitting on old railway sleepers. The arrival of a storage hut and some deckchairs had been a real red letter day! Their new Portacabin is certainly not luxurious, but as the late Autumn breeze finds its way around the vast covered slipway its warmth, shelter and constantly boiling kettle make life much more bearable. But the financial ethos of those very basic early days remains - the Portacabin clock was 10p at a car boot sale and any useable timber discarded within dragging radius soon finds its way behind the storage hut for future use! Something which isn't in short supply is keenness, with a sense of humour very close behind. You know what to expect when you see the notice board - covered in photographs with probably libelous captions and 'thinks bubbles' - and the 'Oakley Hotel - vacancies' sign swinging outside the Portacabin door. Another clue is the manufacturer's plate on the approach steps - 'Pinchit and Bodger (Contractors) Est. 1994'.

The banter and humour is a necessity if you're to spend your days off underneath a lifeboat covered in old shellfish or polishing brass at a furious pace just to keep warm, but under it all is a serious and very committed side.

As well as the routine cleaning (a roof full of pigeons doesn't help) the group has managed some quite major work, including stripping the modern orange paint from the coachroof of Grace Darling and working down through earlier greys to the bare wood. Anyone who has ever tried to strip paint thoroughly enough to re-varnish will appreciate the amount of work involved, but with her coachroof now gleaming mahogany and her end boxes white (as she was through most of her service life) the effort was well worthwhile.

Over the years many of the boats have been modified and worn different liveries, but the eventual aim is to show them all as they would have been through most of their service lives.

One interesting spin-off from this philosophy is the unusual colour scheme on the ex-Margate lifeboat North Foreland. Conversations with her erstwhile mechanic had unearthed an interesting fact - because her white underwater areas had become stained when she had dried out in the harbour they had painted her bottom blue, leaving just a white 'boot-top' stripe. And, after a little grafting, that is exactly how North Foreland looks today...

Outside the cavernous building which houses the land-based collection is another of the volunteer group's responsibilities - the still sea-going Waveney 44-001. Built in America in 1964 the always-unnamed lifeboat was the prototype for the UK-built versions, and holds a special place in the RNLI as the very first of its early generation of fast lifeboats. Moored in the Medway nearby 44-001 is kept in useable condition and has already shown the flag at nearby maritime events, with more planned for 1998. And if a quick trip down the river to warm the engines through is one of the more pleasant aspects of maintaining this magnificent collection then who can begrudge the hardworking volunteers a single minute of it.

For as you drive away, your ears still ringing with the laughter and banter and your memories of the enthusiasm and well-kept boats fresh in the mind, you're very glad that no-one in the RNLI seems ever to have heard of the maxim 'never, ever volunteer'!.