Annual charity events already underway
2012’s big Royal National Lifeboat Institution fundraising push culminates this Friday, 27 January, with its annual SOS Day.
Communities around Britain and Ireland are already enjoying SOS-themed events. Across the islands there are sales on stalls, songs are being sung, shoes shone, scalps shaved, sloops sailed and cars washed in soap-or-suds marathons. For those with an appetite, soup is slurped, scones are scoffed and sausages sizzled, all in the name of charity.
But the public are most likely to see RNLI SOS at work in towns and supermarkets, inviting you to lighten your pockets straight into the collecting buckets…
Events to look out for:
- This is SOS Radio Week – amateur radio enthusiasts are broadcasting to the world from around 40 lifeboat stations, taking pledges as they talk
- Poole Bay small boat angling club held a Sit On Safety weekend
- Workers from one Bridgwater firm are creating a rock band in just five weeks and will give a one-off, fundraising, public performance on SOS Day
- On Saturday, volunteer crew from Weston RNLI will ‘rowathon’ the equivalent of the 50 miles from Weston to Sharpness on machines outside a local supermarket
- RNLI lifeguards will take a mass chilly dip in the sea at Bournemouth
- Radio 2’s Nigel Odgen plays ‘Splendid Organ Sounds’ at Trowbridge’s St James Parish Church
- And at Penlee, scene of the worst lifeboat disaster of modern times with the loss of all hands in the 1981 sinking of the lifeboat Solomon Browne and the boat she was trying to rescue, the station’s current crew will cycle 125 miles from Plymouth to Newlyn.
This week alone the RNLI has been involved in several notable rescues: two girls were retrieved from rocks by Tenby crew after posting their plight on Facebook, Barra crew spent nine hours rescuing a Gaelic TV presenter whose oar broke in a charity ocean row, and eleven young dinghy sailors had their training session curtailed by a sudden gale and had to be rescued by Sunderland lifeboat.
To help keep the RNLI going strong year long look out for fundraisers in your area, or visit www.rnli.org.uk/SOS
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