Mudeford Lifeboat Station
| Inshore Lifeboat | |
|---|---|
| Launch Method | Carriage |
| Address | Mudeford Quay, Mudeford, Christchurch, Dorset, BH23 4AB |
| Telephone | 01425 276604 |
Explore two centuries of RNLI lifeboat history, heroic rescues, and the enduring tradition of saving lives at sea.
On Mudeford Quay at the narrow entrance to Christchurch Harbour, Mudeford runs a single fast Atlantic 85 over a busy stretch of holiday coast where the run between the harbour and the open sea is funnelled across a notorious sandbar. One of the inshore stations born of the 1960s leisure-boating boom, it has answered the harbour mouth, Christchurch Bay and the beaches of Hengistbury Head and Avon Beach since 1963.
During the 1960s the RNLI deployed light inflatable inshore lifeboats at points around the coast where a quick response to the rising number of leisure craft and bathers could not be made by the larger all-weather boats stationed for commercial shipping. Mudeford Quay, at the entrance to Christchurch Harbour, was chosen as a suitable place and a small inflatable was provided in 1963.
These early inflatables could work only in relatively good conditions and were seldom used in winter. As their value was proven, some stations received an ‘intermediate’ boat able to operate in harder weather: as early as 1970 Mudeford was one of the stations used to trial the new Atlantic 21 rigid inflatable, prototype B-500, and a C-class boat followed in 1981, a new boathouse opening for it on 28 June that year.
The present station building on Mudeford Quay was opened in 2003. Today the station operates an Atlantic 85, a fast rigid inflatable with the speed and range to work well out into Christchurch Bay as well as close inshore. Much of its work is generated by the harbour entrance itself, where the ebb pours out over a shifting sandbar and catches small craft, paddleboarders and swimmers, and by the crowded beaches either side — Avon Beach, Mudeford Sandbank and the shore below Hengistbury Head — where people are regularly cut off by the tide or carried out of their depth.
