Hayling Island Lifeboat Station
Hayling Island Lifeboat Station stands on the eastern side of Hayling Island in Hampshire, at the entrance to Chichester Harbour opposite West Wittering. Its inshore lifeboats cover one of the busiest stretches of leisure sailing in Britain, with an estimated 10,000 boats in the Chichester area alone, close to the shipping lanes of the Solent.
History
The first lifeboat was placed on Hayling Island in 1865, after fishermen rescued the crew of the sloop Cygnet of Portsmouth from the Woolsiner Sandbank in a gale in 1862, and it served until 1924. Nearly fifty years later, in 1971, local people founded the Hayling Island Sea Rescue and Research Organisation to answer the growing number of calls from small boats; it was run jointly with the RNLI from 1975 and taken over fully in 1978. The station has a fine record of rescues in the dangerous waters of the harbour entrance. It operates an Atlantic 85 and a D-class inshore lifeboat.
Visiting
The station is near the Ferry Point end of the island’s long shingle beach, close to Sandy Point nature reserve, and has a shop in summer.
About island lifeboat stations
All lifeboat stations →On islands, the lifeboat is often the only help that can reach someone in trouble at sea, and island lifeboat crews cover some of the most exposed waters around Britain and Ireland. Here you will find the lifeboat stations on the islands we cover, with their history and the boats they launch.
