The Coastguard Boat

The Poole Coastguard boat is a 5.8 metre RIBTEC rigid inflateable powered by a 75 horsepower outboard giving a top speed in the order of 35 knots. It normally carries a crew of 2 or 3 made up of auxiliaries from Poole and our neighbouring station of Southbourne.

Its primary role is as a patrol vessel, incident prevention, and water safety education, although it will obviously render assistance wherever it can.

Since 1986 this boat and the previous boat have dealt with a total of 1338 incidents to date.

Crews are made up of trained coxswains and crews drawn from local coastguard stations. These people carry out patrols voluntary and are not paid for their time when on patrol.

The boat mainly operates between 1000 and 1800 hrs on weekends, bank holidays and during special periods of water activity.

The team members are drawn from many walks of live and include a policeman, nurse, plumbers, council workers and employees of the local RNLI HQ. We also have several businessmen and number just 12 members.

There has been a 13% rise in the number of incidents this year on the same time last year (2001).

2001 saw a total of 217 incidents in the Poole area alone. This does not include the numbers for Southbourne, Swanage and St Albans. Of these 53% are waterborne incidents requiring some form of boat action.

Poole Harbour has over 16 square miles of open water. There is 54 miles of shore line. This does not account for Christchurch Harbour and Bay, Swanage Bay, Poole Bay and the waters around St Albans.