Coastguard Queenstown’s seeking more vollies and also looking to lift its female membership from its present level of about 35%.
‘‘It actually doesn’t matter what gender you are, but we’re keen to keep it as diverse as possible,’’ vice-president Johnny Quinn says.
Coastguard currently has 20 active members and 30 on its books.
It responds to incidents on the lake about once a month, and has training each Monday at 6pm at its Frankton marina headquarters.
‘‘We’re here to support the community and we want to be there in the event of anybody being in trouble on the water,’’ Quinn says.
‘‘For anyone who feels, ‘oh, I couldn’t do that’, or ‘it’s not for me’, you’d be really surprised if you came along.’’
Among newish recruits are Brooke Rayner, who joined about a year ago and is now a deckhand, and Mikayla Oliver, who came onboard three months ago.
‘‘I just wanted to be more involved in the community,’’ Rayner says.
‘‘I work at the pool as a swim instructor, we teach kids water safety all the time, so I wanted to have more knowledge in that, so coming to Coastguard I can learn more and then give that to the kids, which then gets it to the families.’’
Oliver, who moved to Queenstown recently, was ‘‘looking for opportunities to get involved in volunteer work, specifically that helped anyone in need or gets out good messaging in the community, so Coastguard was one of the options I saw advertised’’.
‘‘They let me come and have a chat and meet a few of the team members, then it went from there.’’
She’s impressed at how trainings are ‘‘really structured’’.
‘‘You have requirements within modules you need to get through to progress to the next stage, from, like, volunteer to deckhand, so it’s quite nice in that sense.’’
And trainings aren’t just about getting on the rescue boat, Quinn says, with ‘dry crew’, helping out with comms and radios, for example, also part of it.
For inquiries, contact Quinn at [email protected]
