20-year-old Shellby-Kate Collins has ended her link with Cowes Lifeboat on, quite literally, a high note.
In addition to surrendering her crew-member’s pager at her last training night at the station, she handed over £120 raised for the RNLI from sponsors of her first parachute jump.
Furthermore Shellby, of Mill Hill Road, Cowes, disclosed this jump was no one-off flight of fancy; since then she has become something of adrenalin junkie having now sky-dived more than 50 times. So proficient has she become, in fact, that she has now become a qualified instructor.
The jumps, from up to 15,000 feet, have all been achieved from a Black Beech 99 aircraft at Dunkeswell, Taunton in Devon. But for a while she is forsaking the sky for the sea, having rejoined a ship as an apprentice deckhand that services wind-turbines off Denmark.
Her ambition, though, is to find a job in the Dunkeswell area so that travel is no longer a problem when she resumes her dare devil jumps.
Station operations manager Mark Southwell said:
“While with this station Shellby has been a very popular and very able boat crew member, and we are very sorry to lose her.”
