Welcome to a Brief Look at What and Who We Are

Nationally, the Maritime Volunteer Service’s main aims are to provide its members with practical training in seamanship, small boat handling, engineering and communications skills. The MVS has 35 Units around the coast and estuaries of the United Kingdom. Regular national, regional and local exercises are carried out with port authorities, the RNLI and HM Coastguard. Anyone aged eighteen or over can join and provided that a volunteer is in good health, there is no upper age limit. The MVS is a totally self-funding charity and relies on donations from individuals, other organisations and businesses to achieve its aims.

The Poole Unit is one of the largest and most dynamic MVS units, we have a permanent headquarters within the public area of the Port of Poole, this is in a portacabin which we use as a combined administrative centre and training room. We also have use of a larger lecture and training room within the secure area of the Port of Poole. We use both of these venues for Monday evening training and at other times as and when the need arises. We also have use of the training rooms at the premises of our training partner Powerboat Training UK in Cobbs Quay Marina.

Classroom training is put into practice in evening and weekend training sessions aboard one of our two launches, Avocet and Tom Sherrin or the more recently acquired 4.5 metre bright red dory named MaViS. The boats and crews are also used by the Harbour Master to carry out regular weekend patrols in certain parts of the harbour, issuing permits and assisting and advising harbour users of the uses and limitations of certain areas of the harbour.

As well as these local patrols we also marshal the exclusion zones for the Bournemouth Air Festival, get involved with oil spill response exercises and can be asked to attend at other emergencies such as when Napoli went aground in Lyme Bay a couple of years ago. We are also in advanced discussions as to what our role will be at the 2012 Olympics in Weymouth Bay.

Our local membership currently stands at 40 plus, we do need to increase this over the next year or so in order to meet our current commitments and prepare for our role in Wemouth Bay for the 2012 Olympics. If you would like to know more about us then please look around our site and feel free to contact us to find out more or to arrange an informal visit to one of our training sessions.