Lyme Regis RNLI Marks 200 Years of Lifesaving With Packed Summer Programme

Two centuries of lifeboat service in Lyme Regis are about to be marked in style. Supporters and volunteers convened at the Lyme Regis Powerboat Club on April 1 to finalise a bicentenary summer programme that runs from a May town parade all the way through to a nine-day Lifeboat Week in August.

Olly Mullen, the newly installed chair of the Lyme Regis and Charmouth Lifeboat Supporters Group, opened the meeting by acknowledging the leadership handover from Ken Lavery, who spent eight years as chair before stepping down last autumn. RNLI Community Manager Andrew Escott also addressed the gathering, outlining the charity's planned developments for the year ahead.

Treasurer Clare Evans delivered the financial picture for 2025: total income of £144,000, an £18,000 improvement on the previous year. That figure was generated entirely by volunteers through events, collection boxes, and the station's RNLI gift shop.

The confirmed calendar is dense. The station's Atlantic 85 inshore lifeboat Spirit of Loch Fyne will be paraded through town on Saturday May 2, departing Holmbush Car Park at midday and finishing at Cobb Gate. On May 9 an RNLI Open Golf Day is scheduled at Lyme Regis Golf Club, and the annual Blessing of the Boats service follows the next afternoon at 3pm.

The headline event is Lifeboat Week, August 15 to 23. For any DIY sailor within reach of the Dorset coast, this is the week worth planning around. After a gap of nine years, the Red Arrows will perform over Lyme Bay on August 15. The return of the Royal Air Force aerobatic team is a fitting centrepiece for the station's 200th anniversary, and organisers are expecting large crowds along the seafront and the Cobb.

Volunteer Helm Mark Ellis, a 42-year-old paramedic who is serving as event lead for the week, has described the bicentenary year as one he intends to make count: "I think I can promise a memorable anniversary." For the first time in Lifeboat Week's history, a serving crew member is running the event, a structural shift that brings operational knowledge directly into the planning process.

For anyone interested in how a working rescue crew maintains a high-performance inshore lifeboat, RNLI open days and on-water demonstrations during Lifeboat Week offer a close-up look that no online guide can replicate. Seeing how the station sequences engine checks, davit operations, and electrical systems on Spirit of Loch Fyne alongside crew training is exactly the kind of practical reference that pays dividends when you are managing similar systems on your own boat.

The year began on February 22 with a thanksgiving service at St Michael's Church in Lyme Regis, precisely 200 years after a letter from London headquarters enclosed £18 4s 0d to fund the town's first lifeboat presence. The spring and summer programme confirmed this week is the second chapter of that milestone, built on six-figure fundraising and a volunteer base that has never been busier.