A smiley chap called Chris was waiting for me as I pulled up at Flint lifeboat station on a sunny spring evening a month ago.
With Neena’s engine gently rumbling after the 200 mile drive from Newcastle, I wound down the window to say hello.
“You must be Jack! Welcome to Flint lifeboat station!”
I knew I’d missed lifeboat life but I didn’t quite realise how much I’d missed the warmth and friendliness of the RNLI volunteers, traits that run deep within the 198 year-old charity.
In those moments, the full glory of The Lifeboat Station Project started flooding back after two long years away, like the first gulp of cool water when you’re thirsty on a summer’s day.
We strolled into the lifeboat station, sanitising our hands on the way in. The world has changed in many ways since March 2020 and there’d be those cautionary procedures to pay attention to from now on.
Then I clocked the distinctive smell of inshore stations like Flint: the diesel, the oil and the rubber sponsons of the D class lifeboat.
The pandemic sure has done strange things to our perception of time but, in just one instant, it was as if I’d never been away. It was good to be back.
Two hours later, I’d already put Neena into her customary darkroom mode and made my first portrait of lifeboat volunteers since 15th March 2020.
After the long drive, I’d hit the ground running and the mission continued seamlessly from there.
Somehow, everything seemed a little more epic this time round. Everything had cranked up a notch. I felt more comfortable as a human and the reasons for making this project felt clearer than ever.
Thanks to an excellent press release published by Hoylake lifeboat station, the media engine soon fired up and Yunus Mulla from BBC North West paid us a visit:
The piece went out that evening to a seemingly huge audience. Passers-by would often call out “I saw you on telly!” right until the very end of the mission.
The next morning, I spoke to Paul Salt live on BBC Radio Merseyside and, once again, I had a sense of order being restored — the good news story of The Lifeboat Station Project was well and truly back on track.
It was also the inaugural mission for The LSP Society app, the place where I updated patrons almost daily with videos, photographs, stories and freshly-made glass plates — the kind of posts I would’ve shared on Facebook and Instagram back in the day but now writing them for you, the very people who are helping to make it happen.
The stories were so plentiful that even I could barely keep up. One particularly special moment that springs to mind was meeting Ant, a Morecambe lifeboat volunteer who used to serve on Neena as a paramedic!
I’m intending to write-up some of these memories as blog posts but you can relive them yourself by downloading the app for iOS or Android and scrolling back through them if you haven’t already.
Here are just a few more memorable moments from Mission 21:
As you know, I love to make crystal clear pictures using audio too. In between making this mission’s photographs, I also recorded several hours of conversations and soundscapes.
Again, I’ll work on more of these in time but I’ve already prepared one for you, which you can listen to right here (I’ve written a little more about it on the Members’ Audio page):
I’m sure you’re getting the gist that this has been quite the mission!
My main task in hand for the next few weeks is to scan the 70 or so glass plates. That’s quite a task in itself, not least as I’ll also need to create new sections within the Limited Edition Prints pages to host them.
Sitting in front of computers for a few weeks is the complete opposite to being on the coast but both are intrinsic to the project’s creation and existence. By the end of last week, I’d scanned the glass plates from Flint and I’ll start working on the files tomorrow.
In short, The LSP feels very firmly back on track after such a protracted pause. I can’t thank you enough for rooting for me and for helping to keep this good news story alive and kicking.
With 158 stations and 80 to go, my mind’s also turning to where I’ll take the project in June for the next exciting chapter! Now, let me think…
If…
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