AS cheque presentations go it doesn't come that much bigger than this.

It was pensioner Joan Hurrell's ambition to splash out £100,000 on a new lifeboat in memory of her parents.

And yesterday the 75-year-old spinster did just that - and her generosity will help keep Hamble Lifeboat afloat with a new state-of-the-art craft.

President of the inshore rescue service charity John Campbell heralded the donation as: "The best thing that has ever happened to us by a long way."

Now, the 24-hour all-year service which is manned by volunteers, can press ahead with plans to replace the high-speed St Andrew IV rescue craft which has been in service since 1991 and meet the Maritime Coastguard Agency's new code of practice.

Their ability to do so is down to Miss Hurrell whose hobby is making model boats - plus some research work by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Miss Hurrell, who worked as a senior technician in a virus research unit in Cambridge, said: "It has always been an ambition of mine to buy a lifeboat in memory of my late parents.

"I asked the RNLI, through the Royal Bank of Scotland, and they said they had enough boats promised and they would take the money if it could be used for just anything - which was not my idea.

"The Royal Bank of Scotland found that the Hamble Lifeboat wanted a new one and I thought I might as well use it for that."

The new Hamble lifeboat -to cost about £200,000 - will bear the names John and Violet Hurrell.

Hamble Lifeboat crew member Trevor Wood said: "This was a bolt out of the blue. Clearly, without this kind of donation independent lifeboats such as ours would not be able to exist."

The new craft will be a 32ft rigid inflatable Halmatic and the organisation will sell its current reserve boat to help raise the rest of the cash needed for the purchase.

Formed in 1968, the rescue organisation has one of the busiest lifeboats in the country.

Over the last three years the charity has responded to 100 or more calls annually - representing ten per cent of all Coastguard lifeboat call outs in the Solent district.