Portsmouth People

INTERVIEWEES

Karen Bosman
Karen is a Watch Officer at the Solent Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (Solent Coastguard), which covers an area from Beachy Head to the Hampshire/Dorset border, and 30 miles out to sea. Her job involves coordinating search and rescue following emergency calls, for a region that includes cliffs, beaches, pleasure sailors, commercial vessels and one of the busiest shipping lane in the world, the English Channel.
She became a Coastguard after being weather-bound in Weymouth while she was sailing. When she took her crew to the Coastguard station to keep them occupied, she was inspired to train to become a Coastguard herself.

Jenna MacFarlane
Jenna is the Visitor Services Coordinator at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth. When her childhood interest in animals led her to studying Marine Biology, she saw animal life at a microscopic level. She began to question her Christian faith as a teenager but when she studied the Krebs Cycle, which describes the way energy is generated in every living creature, she began to re-evaluate her beliefs. She couldn’t believe that such a perfect system was created by chance, and believes that something far greater and more powerful, must be involved. She found that the science she’d learned was backed up by the faith that she had developed.

Carol Tolfrey
Carol is a triathlete who belongs to Portsmouth Triathletes club. The sport of triathlon involves swimming, cycling and running, and the club swims in the sea off Portsmouth. Carol only began triathlon training at the age of 44, after being inspired seeing her son run a marathon. She’s since run the London Marathon and competed in triathlons, a discipline which has helped her to cope with the illness of her husband and his subsequent death from Alzheimer’s disease.

Alex Lochrane
Alex is the CEO of the Jubilee Sailing Trust, a charity which runs sailing holidays where disabled and able-bodied people, from 16 to 99 years old, crew tall ships side-by-side. Their ships regularly sail out of Portsmouth.
Alex spent 25 years in the Royal Navy, becoming a Commander before joining the Jubilee Sailing Trust. The trust was originally set up with a grant from Her Majesty the Queen's Silver Jubilee Appeal, and more recently their tall ship, Tenacious, took part in the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.