Lifeboat Lottery The £1M barrier has been broken! The Winter 2006 Lifeboat Lottery brought in more than £1M, making the final income for the year £3.9M. This is a magnificent total and more than half as much again as that for 2005 (£2.5M).

The RNLI heartily thanks the 67,000 or so supporters who bought or sold tickets across Great Britain over the Winter alone. In this issue, we meet one extraordinary ticket seller. Lifeboat Mary An RNLI volunteer wearing a lifeboat crew jumper nervously collects an award recognising a lifetime of unpaid service. The resulting applause is not for a young rescuer, or experienced coxswain, but 76-year-old fundraiser Mary Taylor.

Volunteers like Mary are rarely thought of as lifesavers, but the funds they raise allow the RNLI to train and equip lifeboat crews. Mary, a born and bred Padstow girl, has raised money for the charity since 1935 when, at the age of five, she helped her mother collect donations. Since then she has rattled tins, baked cakes and sold Lottery tickets in aid of the RNLI. In 2006 alone, she sold over 5,000 Lottery tickets and has single-handedly raised over £70,000 in the last 24 years.

Mary reckons her secret is in approaching with a smile and asking ‘Would you like to buy a raffle ticket to support the lifeboats?’ She says she rarely gets people saying no! Mary’s love of the RNLI isn’t just shown through her tireless fundraising. Whenever she hears that the Padstow lifeboat crew have launched at night, she lights a candle for them in her window.

‘I can’t sleep if I know they are out at sea,’ she says. In the past, crew members returning from a long service could expect hot breakfasts or pasties cooked by Mary’s own hand. And these days she still treats the crew to her strong ‘Lifeboat tea’ and lemon cake from time to time.

But what has made her devote her whole life to helping the RNLI? ‘I just love it, it’s what I live for,’ says Mary. ‘I still go to the boathouse once a week and, as long as I can see the lifeboat, I’m all right. It’s always been part of my life because I was born into a lifeboating family.’ Her father and grandfather were both Coxswain of the Padstow lifeboat, and today her son Eric is Deputy Chairman of the Penlee lifeboat station committee. Her grandson, James, is an inshore lifeboat helmsman at Penlee.

Mary’s commitment to raising funds has seen her earn a clutch of RNLI fundraising awards, including a Silver Statuette, Silver Badge, Gold Badge and the Bar to Gold Badge. HRH Princess Alexandra presented Mary with her Bar to Gold Badge at the charity’s Annual Presentation of Awards in May 2006. ‘When I went up, she said that she liked my jumper,’ recalls Mary. ‘So I said, “you can’t have this, my boys gave it to me!”’ The crew so fondly known to Mary as ‘her boys’ now have a new boathouse, slipway and lifeboat. ‘That new lifeboat is amazing,’ says Mary of the new 25 knot Tamar class. ‘If my father or grandfather had seen one of them Tamars, they wouldn’t have believed it! They are all beauties, that lifeboat crew, and they deserve the best.’ Mary says she is glad to know that the funds she helps to raise go towards safer lifeboats and a high standard of training – especially given her own grandson is a crew member. ‘The better prepared they are, the better I feel, because I know that when the sea wants, she takes. You look out from here sometimes and you know the sea’s hungry, and you don’t want to be out there.’ 1stprize Be smart in Summer First prize for the Summer 2007 Lifeboat Lottery is a smart fortwo. The second prize is a Fred. Olsen 13-night cruise to the Canary Islands, and there will also be seven other cash prizes from £500–£100. Tickets for this draw will be available to members 16 April–15 June and earlier to fundraising branches. If you don’t usually receive tickets and would like to, please call on 0845 121 4999 or email [email protected] (unless you live in Northern Ireland or the RoI where, unfortunately, tax and gaming laws differ). 2ndprize Winter winners The lucky winner of the first prize in the recordbreaking Winter 2006 Lottery (a Ford Ka) was Mrs M Smith, of West Sussex. She took up an invitation to visit her local lifeboat station at Shoreham Harbour and met the crew. By chance, they had just returned from a successful ‘shout’ to two fishermen on a boat that was taking on water, the 10m Jackelly.

Mrs Smith said: ‘I was delighted to win first prize in the raffle; I have been buying the tickets for many years! I have great admiration for the brave volunteers who risk their lives to save others, and found my tour of Shoreham lifeboat station both informative and interesting.’ Mrs RM Rowland from Devon won the 11-day ‘Land of the midnight sun’ cruise donated by Travelscope Holidays Ltd. The £500 high street store vouchers went to Mrs H Whitehurst from Leicestershire; Sir PA Graham from London received £250 cash; and £100 cash each was won by Mr WA Lee of Middlesex; Mrs B Wright of Somerset; Miss JM Disley of Kent; Mrs AM Tudor of Surrey and Mrs JW Lymbery of Hertfordshire. .