RNLI: Wales lifeboats 'under more pressure' at Christmas

Owain Williams risks missing Christmas with his family if he is paged with an emergency

The RNLI has said pressure on its crews over Christmas has increased "dramatically" over the past decade.

The number of calls has risen by 187% over 10 years, with Welsh lifeboats called out 23 times over the last festive period - up from nine in 2008.

Ken Fitzpatrick, station manager at RNLI Porthdinllaen in Gwynedd, said more people tend to go away over the festive period to the coast.

"They're using boats and also walking has become a big thing," he said.

• The highs and lows of being a Christmas Day worker

• The on-call Christmas heroes

"There are hundreds of people walking the coastline and people don't think who's going to save them if they fall over the edge.

"The dogs go ahead of them, and things happen. I also think the weather is a lot milder than in the past, so more people are going out."

Lifeboats were called out 23 times between between last Christmas Eve and New Years Day

Owain Williams, who works as a coxswain at Porthdinllaeth, will be on call on Christmas Day for the first time - meaning he has to stay within 10 minutes of the station with his pager on 24 hours a day.

"There'll be shoes at the door, and clothes ready in case I have to go," he said.

"Perhaps we won't be called out and it'll be a normal day but it does play at the back of your mind."

Mr Williams said there would also be an engineer and at least six volunteers on call.

"We could be dealing with anything - people walking along the coastal path, dogs falling off cliffs, the fishing boats go out all year round and anything more then, like commercial boats and so on.

Owain Williams says his crew will be ready to deal with whatever Christmas Day brings

"We never know when the pagers go off what we're being called out to.

"To be honest, we're hoping it'll be a quiet time and we won't have to go out. But then we've been trained to deal with all sorts of things, so whatever comes we'll be ready to deal with it."

As a father to two-year old Lois, any call-out will mean his family have to celebrate Christmas without him.

His partner, Luned Eurig, said: "This year we've decided to stay at home because Owain's on call.

"We can't go down to the south to my parents like we did last year."