As 2025 makes its (very wet and windy) debut, we’d like to wish all our members and supporters a very happy new year.
Looking back on our 30th anniversary year, 2024 was a busy one at MVS Poole. Through our programme of harbour patrols (undertaken on behalf of Poole Harbour Commissioners), we were able to help and support the Poole Harbour community and make a real difference.
Whilst on patrol, our vessels steamed a distance of over 1,100 nautical miles – that’s the equivalent of sailing a passage from Poole to Gibraltar!
In addition our volunteers put in a staggering 1,385 volunteer hours, spent the equivalent of 24 continuous days on duty and interacted with other harbour users over 340 times, from providing local advice to waterborne visitors to managing summer traffic flow between the bridges.
Throughout the season our crews saw it all, from runaway mooring buoys by the chain ferry, a visit from a fully-electric boat, and providing occasional assistance to boaters encountering difficulties.
Our boats and crews also contributed to the Poole Harbour Watch scheme, providing night patrols with other organisations as a means of deterring marine crime during the hours of darkness.
We were delighted to be invited to attend and assist with other events too. From exhibiting our work at the Beating the Sea Bounds parade to joining the flotilla of small craft for the D-Day celebrations and providing safety boat cover to the Poole Harbour Canoe Race (where our volunteers helped a few exhausted canoeists get back on course), we had a busy season.
On top of patrols, we delivered our usual suite of classroom and afloat training, where we implemented our refreshed and updated Pathway training book for the first time, as well as giving our website a spring clean earlier in the year.
2024 truly was a busy and rewarding year for us. So what about this coming year?
Looking ahead to 2025…
Even though the weather is cold, wet and windy, our work still carries on throughout the winter.
January will see us begin preparations for the upcoming sailing season, with theory classes in night navigation complemented by a set of practical night sessions afloat.
In the spring Avocet will be taken out of the water for annual maintenance and refit and Trevora will be readied for the upcoming patrols season.
We hope that we can do everything we did in 2024 and more this year, as we enter our 31st year of charity work.
As always, our thanks to our volunteers for all the work they do, and thanks to Poole Harbour Commissioners for their ongoing support of our work.
If you’re reading this and you’re not a member, why not head over to the membership page to see how you can help?