New Sennen Cove Lifeboat
Last Sunday, I was lucky enough to view the new Sennen Cove All Weather Lifeboat.
For those of you who do not know, Sennen Cove is a small village just north of Land’s End in the very west of Cornwall in the UK. The seas around the coast of west Cornwall can be treacherous – the lifeboat crews deserve the very best equipment that we can give them.
The new lifeboat, ‘City of London III’, is one of the RNLI’s new Tamar class lifeboats. City of London III was built in 2009 at a cost of £2.7 million and began service at Sennen Cove in January 2010. She is a 16 metre self-righting lifeboat powered by two 1,000hp Caterpillar diesels which give her a top speed of 25 knots. She has an endurance of more than 10 hours at full speed. All in all, she is a very ‘high-tech’ vessel.
A crew pool of 24 people is available to man the two Sennen Cove lifeboats – the new one and the inshore one. All are highly trained and dedicated volunteers. This pool ensures adequate crew availability to man both boats immediately 24 hours daily 365 days per year. And yes, they have had to launch on Christmas day.
The lifeboat house was open to all and it was a real privilege to be able to crawl all over the boat and chat to the crew.
Towards the end of the afternoon both lifeboats were launched and then recovered about half an hour later.
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