Busy year for RNLI

Dunbar and Eyemouth were ranked the fifth and 15th busiest stations in Scotland, with 22 and 19 shouts respectively.

In those operations, the Dunbar boats rescued 21 people, while the Eyemouth crew rescued 28, with the RNLI judging that two lives were saved by the teams’ actions.

Together, the two crews spent 3,402 hours in action, either out on shouts or on exercises.

The St Abbs station, which the RNLI withdrew its lifeboat from in September, saw 13 launches in 2015, saving one life according to the charity and rescuing seven people in total.

The crew at St Abbs had put in 274 hours on the sea before the RNLI withdrew its lifeboat.

Nationally, the busiest station was Broughty Ferry, with 92 shouts. The busiest inshore station was Queensferry with 73.

In total, the RNLI launched 1,078 times in 2015 (up from 1,002 in 2014) and rescued 1,046 (down from 1,169).

Around a fifth of callouts were to pleasure boats, and a similar number were to vessels after machinery failures.

Nearly 40 callouts were to people cut off by tides.

Matt Crofts from the RNLI said: “We would like to thank all of our volunteers for their tireless hard work and dedication over the last 12 months.

“Without all of our volunteers, fundraisers and education teams our lifesaving service would not operate.”