10 years ago, we opened our training centre of excellence. A decade on, what difference has RNLI College made?

There’s a small but unusual entry in the Winter 2012 launches feature of the Lifeboat. Unassuming, tucked between entries for Rhyl and Rock, is ‘RNLI COLLEGE B-840: Sep 19’.

Trainer Alex Evans will never forget that launch. He was taking a group of trainee helms at the College through a night navigation exercise in Poole Harbour. They were searching for an unlit mark. Very quickly, the exercise became a real rescue. ‘On the first go I knew the tide had pushed us too far into the harbour, so we went back to where we started and tried again,’ he recalls. ‘When we set off for the second time, something caught my eye.’

A woman in her late 20s was in the water, cold and in the late stages of drowning. ‘I turned my torch on and there she was,’ Alex continues. ‘The guys thought this was all part of the scenario, but as soon as they saw her they realised it was for real. We rigged up a step from one of our lifejacket straps and helped her into the boat, then got her to an ambulance at Poole Lifeboat Station as quickly as possible.

‘If they had found the mark the first time or taken a different course, we never would have spotted that casualty. You just never know quite how soon you’ll be putting your training into practice.’

It was the first life officially saved by RNLI College. But every rescue listed in the centre of this magazine in recent years will have rested on someone’s experience at the home of RNLI training. Countless lives have been saved and dangers averted by the courses delivered there in the last decade.

Since its opening by Her Majesty The Queen on 28 July 2004, the College has seen thousands of volunteer crew pass through its doors, and into its classrooms, live engine workshop, lifeboats, bridge simulator and sea survival pool.

In 2013 alone, 397 volunteers went on the weeklong Trainee Crew course, and the positive impact it has on newcomers to the RNLI is unmistakable. Matt Jones, who has been crew at Llandudno for a year, looks remarkably warm and happy for someone who’s just taken a powerboat exam in the driving January rain.

‘They’ve got the perfect setup here,’ he says. ‘Training at the station is great, but you’re fitting those few hours a week around other commitments. Here, you’re completely focused. You learn something in the classroom and then go straight out and practise it on the water. We’re all in it together, and if you don’t understand something there’s time to get back out there and try again.’

The College now hosts 48 operational courses, with a further 31 delivered at stations by mobile trainers. Visiting crew members from around the UK and Republic of Ireland can stay, study and eat on site. It’s a far cry from the days when training space and bedrooms had to be hired externally at a cost of £1M a year.

As we entered the 21st century, training had never been more important: fewer and fewer lifeboat volunteers were joining crews with any maritime experience. ‘And yet we were asking them to operate increasingly sophisticated lifeboats, and carry out rescues in really challenging environments that were totally new to them,’ says Glen Mallen, Lifeboat Training Manager at the College.

Alex agrees – as one of the last volunteers to do their Trainee Crew course at the Inshore Lifeboat Centre in East Cowes, he is from the ‘old school’: ‘For our capsize training we were chucked in the Medina,’ he remembers. ‘The water was brown, you couldn’t see your feet, and there were safety divers positioned all around us due to the river current.’

Not that a real capsize situation is going to happen in pristine, ozone-treated waters – but the Sea Survival Centre enables crew to learn in a controlled environment, where the hazards and challenges are there by design, rather than accident.

Alex explains: ‘If something does go wrong you can just stop and turn the lights on, you can see under the water. We can recreate tougher conditions for the helm courses: in the dark with rain, wind, all the noise, we throw in extra things like a casualty that they’ve rescued. You wouldn’t be able to do that in the Medina.’

RNLI College has continued to develop and adapt to the training needs of the charity and its vision for the future. Changing its name from the Lifeboat College in 2011, it has moved with the shifting demands of an organisation recognised as an international leader in saving lives at sea and inland.

Our lifeguard service has more than doubled in size since 2004, in which time the College has become a centre of expertise for the local teams who train our beach lifesavers. And in 2012 we established a Future Leaders in Lifesaving course to share skills and empower our counterparts in other countries to tackle drowning at home.

If you have visited the College, you’ll know that RNLI supporters are as welcome as lifesavers. You can have an evening meal there, run a conference, enjoy a weekend stay or get married. Even the sea survival pool earns its keep, hosting film crews when it’s not in use for lifesaving training. To date this careful use of the College’s spare capacity has generated a turnover of around £11M.

It’s down to Business Manager Graham Ireland and his team to ensure this commercial venture complements and supports the College’s training mission. And he’s conscious that this is the first way that many supporters come into contact with the RNLI: ‘There’s an active, tangible quality to the RNLI’s work when you visit the College. Not many hotel guests can buy a pint and donate to a charity at the same time … or watch a crew member firefighting from the restaurant window.’

While the business and training teams provide essential expertise to keep the College running, there is also a gang of volunteers who provide a warm welcome for visitors. ‘This is a home for nontraditional volunteering,’ explains Debbie Corke, who helped set up the College’s volunteer-led tours in 2009. One of this 31-strong team is Gerald Beddard, who has also become a volunteer bosun recently, helping the trainers by laying out kit for courses, refuelling lifeboats and checking equipment. His involvement with the RNLI began ‘many moons ago, helping my mother collect on flag days … now I feel like I’m part of the crew, at the heart of the action. You can reach out and touch it!’

For those ‘traditional’ volunteers – the lifeboat crew – the integration of lifesaving and training will always be a fine art. In a world of advanced new lifeboats, technology and lifesaving techniques, the College will continue to prepare them for the unexpected.

And what did those trainee navigators do after saving a life in Poole Harbour? ‘We went back out and tried to find that unlit mark again,’ says Alex. ‘And the crew found it spot on, second time round.’