Schoolteacher Richard Leigh, from Port St Mary, has just been made Coxswain of the village RNLI’s Trent class lifeboat, Gough Ritchie II.

Richard, who spent the half term break doing his assessments, volunteered for the RNLI on both the all-weather lifeboat and inshore lifeboat in 1998.

Over the years he worked his way up as a Navigator and then Helm on the inshore lifeboat.

Since joining Port St Mary RNLI he has been crew on 90 all-weather lifeboat service calls and 30 inshore lifeboat incidents.

One memorable call was in 2000 to search for the ill-fated Solway Harvester, when Port St Mary RNLI crew were at sea for 10 hours in very bad weather.

He has also raised several thousand pounds for the charity by doing the End to End race and finishing the Parish Walk three times.