[5] After the departure of the RAF, Hampshire County Council opened an educational activities centre on the site, which was The centre was constantly being asked by HM Coastguard to use its boats to go out and rescue people in trouble off shore.

The administrators of the centre decided that they would contact the RNLI with a view to there being a more formalised rescue service for this busy stretch of water.

The RNLI spent a year evaluating this proposition and as a result opened a lifeboat station on the site in 1970.

[6][7] Although lacking in self-righting capability, she was viewed as a successful experiment in the use of fibreglass for lifeboats.

[citation needed] In the evening of 10 January 1976, during gale force 8 to 9 winds and a choppy sea the lifeboat Ernest Williams was called to help a small motorboat which had been driven ashore on salt marsh in the Ashlett Creek channel.

[9] Hampshire County Council provided a new boarding jetty for use jointly by the lifeboat station and the Calsholt Activity Centre.

[13] Margaret Russell Fraser had come across the Solent from Yarmouth Lifeboat Station on the Isle of Wight, where she had been a part of RNLI's relief fleet.