There have been organised lifeboat and life-saving teams based in Sumner, serving the Christchurch and Canterbury community, since the 1870s when Captain Day and his colleagues jumped in their rowing boats and battled high seas to save people shipwrecked on Sumner Bar.
Back then, there were few rules other than the human duty to save lives. Today, our organisation is more structured and must be more compliant than ever before with national and international regulations.
Yet the service is still provided by volunteers, who not only (strictly within Health and Safety constraints) put their own lives at risk in a crisis, but also give enormous amounts of their personal time to being trained or training others, and to practising their drill to perfection.
