On Tuesday 27th March, crew members from SARA Sharpness & Wyre Forest Stations visited Widden Primary School in Gloucester as part of Year 2’s project on Lifeboats. The children will shortly undertake a Sponsored Spell for SARA and have selected appropriate words as part of their ‘test’. They saw pictures of the other SARA lifeboats and had a close look at SARA 2 which is based at Sharpness.

Geoff Dawe (coxswain) explained the necessity for wearing drysuit/lifejacket/helmet and some of the equipment carried on the lifeboat. The children presented the crew with pictures they had drawn especially for the occasion.

Students in Year 8 at Archway School in Stroud will undertake a Sponsored Spell on Thursday 25th January to raise funds for SARA, their chosen charity for 2007. All students are asked to learn 50 words and obtain sponsorship for every word spelt correctly.

This follows a recent presentation on Water Safety given to the school by Brett Richings, Station Chairman at SARA Sharpness, where the children learnt of the dangers involved with water. They also met some of the crew from the lifeboat station and learnt a little of SARA’s work on the tidal estuary and beyond.

Gloucestershire Police has recovered the generator and oxygen equipment that was stolen from the Sharpness lifeboat stations search and rescue Ambulance on Sunday the 28th of August. The Generator was recovered in full working order however the oxygen set and trauma bag has suffered severe water damage and whilst the oxygen bottle can be salvaged the rest of the life saving equipment will have to be replaced.

Station Chairman Shane Clark says this is an excellent result achieved in such a short time, I would like to send my heart felt thanks to Berkeley and Dursley Police Station’s for finding this vital equipment so soon, Shane says having the property post coded always help’s with re-uniting property as all the equipment that SARA owns has a special “microdot” system sprayed on it at time of purchase and under a ultra-violet light and special magnifier thousands of little dots all read “SARA and our Postcode” the treatment can be applied to anything from kit bags to vehicles and outboard motors, the treatment is impossible to remove and impossible to see with the naked eye. Shane went onto say that post coding items helps the Police re-unite stolen property much faster to its legal owner in the event of a theft.

The Ambulance is currently in secure storage awaiting new back doors to be fitted, this has had to go through our insurance company as the cost of the damage caused is in excess of £1,000, I am convinced this will affect next years already £6,000 insurance premium the station currently pays.

I am very grateful to the huge amount of public support we received on this despicable crime, we were donated a new generator last Tuesday by a Bristol man and several donations were made to help us replace the medical equipment, I cant thank-you all enough.

This crime had excellent national media coverage and would like to think this has helped the Police with the rapid result.

Sharpness lifeboat station has kindly been donated two special response bags containing the new styled Kevlar oxygen cylinders (yet to be issued to front line ambulances) and first aid and resuscitation equipment that has been carefully designed by Gloucestershire Ambulance Service for use with organisations like ourselves.

The British Oxygen Company (BOC) manager visited the sharpness station and happily reduced the cost of rental for the two cylinders and donated two spare cylinders and the emergency grab bags free of charge.

This will now mean that both the lifeboat haulage LandRover and the newly appointed incident command ambulance will be able to carry oxygen and be used by the stations 17 trained lifeboat crew.

Gloucestershire Ambulance service is also looking at donating a defibrillator to the sharpness station.

My heart felt thanks go to Kevin at Gloucestershire Ambulance service and of course BOC for all the hard work they has put into the design and distribution of this unique response bag. Shane Clark – SARA Sharpness Station Chairman

Sharpness has been donated a vehicle from local haulage company “SOS Transport” in Yate, the vehicle will be sprayed in Mountain Rescue colours of White and liveried accordingly. We would like to thank Gloucestershire Police Workshops for their kind donation of auxiliary Lighting and of course SOS Transport.