The Coastguard had about 24 small patrol boats all around the UK.  A few were classed as rescue boats as there were no other rescue boats available.  Over the years the RNLI have placed there own boats in some of these area so making our rescue boats redundant.  The remaining boats that are not rescue boats are classed as patrol boats, there main task was accident prevention and PR.
A CG boat has been based in Torbay for about 40 years.  
The boat was manned by the Torbay team, who had all been trained as Crew or Coxswains.  There Patrol area was from Straight point in Exmouth down to and including Torbay then all of Start bay finishing at Start point.  The area was very big so most of the time was spent in the busy areas i.e. Torbay, Tiegnmouth and Dawlish.
A Patrol would normally cover about a 20 mile patch giving advice to people on the rocks or the beach, chasing after the inflatables that were blown of the beach, occasionally with people on board and attend any jobs that come up. As we are already afloat we would get there that much quicker.
Then there were the times you would find someone in trouble that no one had reported, these varied from children hanging onto navigation markers off shore and are unable to swim back, boats that had sunk or capsized giving them no chance to give a distress call.
The Coastguard have now decided to scrap all of there Patrol boats.  They will be putting 6 new boats afloat, three will be for MCA surveyors leaving 3 for patrols.  The one patrol for our area will be based in Liverpool some 270 miles away.  The new boats area will be from Liverpool all of Wales, North Devon, all of Cornwall and South devon. Which means we loose our boat sometime in October 2002.
Below is a snap shot list of our jobs for the boat from 1995 to 2001


In a five year period the boat has been called by the operations room 85 times to jobs helping 134 people.  While on patrol the crew from our boat has found 41 jobs helping 85 persons.

In total we have attended 125 jobs and helped 219 people in just five years.  We have also given countless people safety advises and help.

Animal rescue------------------------------   3
Boats sinking-------------------------------   2
Capsize---------------------------------------   3
Cut off by the tide------------------------    17
Cliff fallers----------------------------------   2
Divers----------------------------------------   2
Escorts---------------------------------------   3
EODU---------------------------------------    2
Investigate----------------------------------   8
Pollution-------------------------------------   3
Persons recovered from the water----  7
Search----------------------------------------  12
Tow-------------------------------------------  27
Windsurfers--------------------------------   8
Assist i.e. Ambulance/ Police----------   6
Others---------------------------------------   20