RNLI lifeboat leaves Filey station for last time

Two inflatable boats, a D-class and an Atlantic 85, will remain at Filey

A lifeboat which has served a North Yorkshire town for 30 years has left its slipway for the last time.

Filey's all-weather Mersey class lifeboat, called "Keep Fit Association", is being taken to Suffolk to provide back-up support.

As the vessel left the lifeboat station for the final time on Thursday, Coxswain Neil Cammish said it had been an "emotional" morning.

The boat will be replaced with two, smaller inflatable craft.

The Mersey-class lifeboat 'Keep Fit Association' has been based at Filey since 1991

The early-morning departure was watched by a group of people gathered on Filey's Coble Landing.

Mr Cammish said: "It's a little bit emotional this morning, it's the last run of the boat.

"[But] it's not the boat that makes the station, it's the people that crew it."

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The lifeboat is being relocated to Lowestoft where it will become part of the relief fleet

The lifeboat has been based at Filey since 1991, but in recent years the station was responding to fewer commercial shipping incidents and more often to people in trouble on the coastline and cliffs.

Darren Lewis, RNLI lifesaving manager, said it was a "significant change" from an enclosed lifeboat to the two smaller boats, but the smaller boats were faster to respond and had the ability to launch more quickly.

Larger all-weather lifeboats are still stationed at nearby Scarborough and Bridlington, said the RNLI.

Filey Lifeboat Station was founded in 1804, about 20 years before the RNLI itself was founded.

It is a charity whose volunteers operate about 238 lifeboat stations around the UK and Republic of Ireland.