It takes just eight and a half minutes between the pager going off and Salcombe’s lifeboats setting off, sometimes into dangerous seas.

The crew members must usually live or work in the town and have very understanding employers and partners.

The RNLI have two boats based in Salcombe, the biggest is a Tamar Class All-Weather Lifeboat called Baltic Exchange III which carries between five and seven crew.

She cost £2.7m and can carry 44 casualties when in self-righting mode and 118 non self righting.

She has a range of 250 miles.

The smaller boat is an inshore Atlantic 85 class which carries four crew and can get in much closer to shore. She  cost £240,000.

Richard ‘Tricky’ Clayton is one of the coxwains (equivalent of captains): ‘’We have 27 sea-going volunteers with a further seven shore helpers.

‘’Those who want to join us begin as shore crew and we give them training lasting from between six months and a year to see how suitable they are.

‘’The next stage is a sea survival course at the RNLI headquarters in Poole and then we pretty much do all our training on-station.

‘’The training is continuous and we run sessions one or two times a week.

‘’We also have assesors who come down from Poole to check that we are teaching the right things.’’

Tricky says it’s very much horses for courses.

‘’When it comes to answering a non-life threatening shout, say a boat whose engine has broken down, we  will often send some of the less experienced crew so they can learn under less pressure.

‘’If it’s a shout involving rough seas, difficult conditions and lives at risk we’ll send an experienced crew.

This year has been very quiet so far for shouts with only around 20 so far., Normally there are 50 to 60 shouts a year.

Richard showed me and my colleague Amy around the Baltic Exchange III, a very impressive vessel which itself carries a small RIB which can get very close to the shore.

The boat has two 1000 horse power engines providing a total of 2000 hose power. She carries 5000 litres of fuel which would be enough to get to France and back.

RNLI Salcombe Press Officer David Dancox told us about a shout on Sunday (July 9) which illustrates the stamina needed by the crew:

‘’The crew headed out around 7am to calls of a yacht which had lost its rudder and was drifting in a dangerous position in the middle of a shipping lane around 30 miles SSW of Salcombe. The crew managed to reach there in around an hour and a half, so quite quickly but then the two back took around five hours and they didn’t return to station until around 3pm in the afternoon.’’ To contact the RNLI with your support you can e-mail: [email protected] or call 01548 842158.