Achill RNLI appoints new visits officer

ACHILL Island RNLI has announced that Orlagh Blake-Dillon has taken up the volunteer role of visits officer at the station.

Orlagh will facilitate organised group visits to the station to highlight water safety awareness and to outline what happens at the station during and between call-outs.

Orlagh and her husband Francis (who also helps out with the station’s fundraising branch) both joined the Achill Island RNLI lifeboat crew as trainees in March 2024 following their move from Dublin to Achill Island. They wanted to build a strong community connection following their move, and having heard about the local lifeboat station from other volunteers, joining the team there was high on their list of priorities.

Orlagh and Francis both excelled in the various aspects of their crew training, and having successfully completed all of their assessments, they received their pagers last November and are available for call-outs on the station’s all-weather Trent class lifeboat.

Orlagh has very much immersed herself in the RNLI experience - she also joined the station’s water safety team alongside fellow volunteers Seamus Butler and Ann Lavelle - and she was delighted to add the role of visits officer to her list of RNLI expertise earlier this month.

Speaking about her new role, Orlagh said: “With summer just around the corner, it is important that people are water safety aware. According to the RNLI, over half of the people who drown at our coasts never intended to be in the water. That means they entered the water unexpectedly or by accident, and didn’t get to make it home safely to their loved ones.”

Orlagh said that even the most experienced water enthusiasts find themselves in difficulty at times. She added: “No one goes to our coasts or waterways with the intention of needing to be rescued, but accidents can happen sometimes despite the best plans and preparations. If you are planning on being on or in the water, the advice is to check the weather and sea conditions, let someone know what your plans are and when you expect to return and always carry a means of calling for help. If you find yourself in difficulty on or near the water, call 999 or 112 and ask for the Coast Guard. Our lifeboat crew will be happy to launch to assist if requested to do so. It’s what we do.”

Visitors to Achill Island RNLI lifeboat station at Kildownet will avail of a ‘meet and greet’, a safety briefing and find out how calls for help are received and managed by those at the station. Groups will get a tour of the station, see the crew room where crew kit is stored ready for use, as well as the wet room and boat house, where a special boarding boat and tractor are safely stored. The boarding boat, launched by the tractor, is used to get crew to and from the station’s all-weather lifeboat, ‘Sam and Ada Moody’, which can launch in all weather conditions, day and night, 365 days a year, with her volunteer crew.

Orlagh, who works as a receptionist at Hotel Newport, continued: “As a charity, the RNLI relies entirely on donations from the public, so it is really important that people can see where their generous donations go and what they are used for. We are happy to facilitate visits for any group, and we can tailor the visit to suit the needs of different groups.”

A visit to Achill Island RNLI can be organised by emailing Orlagh at o_blake-dillion@rnli.org.uk.

Ciaran Needham, Achill Island RNLI volunteer lifeboat operations manager, said: “We are delighted that Orlagh has taken up the role of visits officer. All of our volunteers, whether they are lifeboat crew or shore-based, play a vital role in saving lives at sea. If we can manage to save just one life by promoting water safety awareness through these visits facilitated by Orlagh, we will be very happy indeed.”

Speaking about the possibility of volunteering at the station, Ciaran said: “We have recently welcomed some new trainee crew to our team, which is fantastic, and there are a variety of roles within the crew that volunteers can become trained in, including coxswain, mechanic and navigator, to name just a few.

“Individuals can approach myself or any volunteer at the station if they wished to become involved. We would welcome anyone with an interest in joining our RNLI family to our team.”