Locked in its own dedicated glass cabinet upstairs in the newly reconstructed base, a model replica of the Royal Navy cruiser battleship HMS Belfast gives its silent blessing to the the fleet in the harbour nearby.

It is approximately eight feet long, fully motorised with lights, remotely controlled and capable of taking to calm water, if not the high seas.

It was a three-year labour of love, one among many other replica ships and boats constructed by the late Tom Lees, who was an Ulladulla marine rescue volunteer for 20 years.

Mr Lees died in his 80s in 2014 and as a tribute, his family offered the Belfast as a donation to the rescue service and commander Ken Lambert snapped up the offer.

Now the vessel will be on permanent display.

So why of all choices did Mr Lees reconstruct the Belfast?

“When his mother was pregnant with Tom she got stranded in Belfast by a storm and couldn’t get home, so Tom was born there, which was not great for a Scotsman,” Mr Lambert laughed.

“He built the model as a reminder.”

Mr Lees’ spent his early career before coming to Australia in the British navy, satisfying his love of boats.

The real HMS Belfast served in both the Second World War and the Korean War.

In 1943 it helped destroy the German warship Scharnhorst and in 1944 supported the Normandy landings.

The Belfast entered reserve in 1963 and since 1971 has become a popular tourist attraction as a museum ship operated by the Imperial War Museum, permanently moored on the River Thames near the Tower Bridge in London.

Ahead of day one of operations at the new Marine Rescue base Mr Lambert is reinforcing changes to the radio service with the boating community.

Among the advances in the changeover to digital, local and visiting recreational boaties will have the option to manage their own trips with a downloadable MarineRescue app.

With the app, seafarers can log themselves on, enter their trip information so it can be monitored and so rescue services will know where to start looking in an emergency, then log off upon return.

Or using conventional methods, all users and Ulladulla radio service members will be required to log on with Marine Rescue Ulladulla by calling channel VHF 16, then to change to the new working channel VHF 19 (ship to shore) to provide voyage and registration details.

The new secondary working channel for Ulladulla to enable boats on the water to communicate with each other (known as ship to ship) will be VHF Channel 71.

The 27 MHz channels 88 and 98 remain the same.

Ulladulla radio operators will guide boaters logging on and off to the correct channel.

Information received will also be forwarded to Marine Rescue units along the coast of NSW for vessels on long ocean voyages.

The change to the VHF channel is effective from Wednesday April 15th.