THIS YEAR marks the 150th anniversary of Weymouth lifeboat station. As the town reflects on this landmark, few could understand the importance of the station within its seaside community as well as Andy Sargent.

Andy is the current coxswain at Weymouth lifeboat and has been a member of the crew for 32 years of the station’s long history.

He first joined the crew as a volunteer in 1987 but is now a full-time coxswain at the Weymouth station.

Like many who don the yellow jackets, Andy was a local lad who wanted to make a difference in his community. He said: “I grew up around the harbour working on fishing boats and the chap I used to work for was part of the lifeboat crew so that’s when I first became interested in it.

“I was the first one in my family to volunteer for the lifeboat but my eldest son Carl joined the crew when he was 18 and he will be 29 this year so he has been a volunteer for more than 10 years.

“My younger son works as an RNLI beach lifeguard so we now have a real family connection to the RNLI.”

Andy remembers the first time he responded to an emergency call: “The first time I went out on the sea with the lifeboat was in 1982. I wasn’t officially on the crew yet, but they were short-staffed, and they needed me to go and help. A family had been washed into the water near Durdle Door and we had to get the parents and children out.”

The lifeboat station first opened on January 26, 1869 and in the station’s 150-year history the lifeboats have launched at least 1,700 times, helping to save more than 800 lives.

“That’s why we do it. All the volunteers and full-timers love doing this because they want to help people and we all get a real buzz from it when we are the ones making the difference and saving somebody’s life.”

Unsurprisingly, Andy has lost count of how many times he has gone to sea with the lifeboat. He said that in 2002, his busiest year as a coxswain, the lifeboats were launched 136 times.

Not every call the lifeboat volunteers respond to is a genuine emergency. Andy recalled one period where he was being called out over and over again to sightings of red flares that turned out to be floating Chinese lanterns.

But the volunteers still need to be prepared for anything: “The calls you are sent out on are generally never what you think it is going to be and the situation can change quite quickly so you need to evaluate the situation and make decisions quite quickly, we call this dynamic risk assessments.

“One time that sticks in my memory was being launched to another one that was quite a tragic outcome.

“We had a call of a sighting of a red flare off Portland Bill in the middle of a gale. We sort of rolled our eyes and said, ‘not another red flare off Portland’ but obviously we still treated it as an emergency and when we got there I saw a light in the distance.

“We steamed over to it and there was a life raft with two people inside who had managed to jump ship and get in the life raft. I remember seeing them and the flare had lit up their faces. Sadly, we searched for the skipper of the fishing boat they were all on, but we never found him.”

There are currently 26 members of crew at Weymouth lifeboat station, 24 of whom are volunteers. Andy said they need at least nine crew members available at any time of the day or night to operate the lifeboats. Volunteers go about their everyday lives wearing a pager that will go off if they are needed.

The crew is on call seven days a week, 365 days a year. Andy said: “It can be quite intense, but it’s really rewarding, the benefits are extraordinary, and the adrenaline rush you get is immense.

“There is a great camaraderie within the crew. But it is a big commitment, it consumes a lot of your time and your family life can suffer as a result of that.

“For example, last year we had about 95 calls and on top of that we had about 130 exercises so that works out as more than every other day.

“It’s not a normal job and you can’t treat it as one. You need to treat it as your vocation and make sacrifices.”

Looking back on his years of service and the long history of the station, Andy reflected on the central role the lifeboat plays in the town: “The station has been a real asset to the community.

“We have always been about being integrated and playing an active role in the community. The station is invaluable to the harbour and the wider marine fraternity.

“The volunteers put in a great deal of effort to help the town and be the best they can be. The community has a fantastic asset in the station and hopefully it can continue to be important in the town.

“When you look at the station 150 years ago, it was wooden lifeboats and iron men in cork life jackets. Now we have all this technology and modern lifeboats.

“Who knows what the future will hold, it will probably involve some form of unmanned lifeboat and drones. Imagine what could be in another 150 years.”