Practical Boat Owner - January 2016

Gear

I

magine a time when lifejacket fabric was cut out by hand and stitched together using manual
fast-forward 50 years, and it still is! SeaSafe Systems Ltd’s marine safety product range sewing machines:
has ballooned from inflatable coats for marine pilots to lifejackets and man overboard recovery equipment. Now
celebrating its golden anniversary year, the independent manufacturer on the Isle of Wight, which has
outgrown two premises in the last 50 years, hints at further expansion and shares insight into its processes.
Wendy Willmott explains: ‘We’re quite a traditional manufacturer: some may say old-fashioned, but Business development manager
it works for us. If it ain’t broken,

How lifejackets
are made and
tested
As 2016 marks a golden anniversary year for SeaSafe Systems Ltd, Laura Hodgetts goes behind the scenes
at the independent British company’s factory
don’t fix it. We do bulk manufacturing, but the average order for us may be four to
five coats. mass producers – we take great ‘We’re not
pride in our bespoke, one-off manufacturing for individual
customers.’bespoke designs have included a pilot SeaSafe’s
jacket for a customer whose girth was wider than his height, plus fits for the petite and very tall. A ‘build-a-coat’ service on the
SeaSafe website ‘does what it says on the tin’. Another side of the business is bulk contract orders of lifejacket lungs for a
variety of well-known companies.

SeaSafe was founded in 1966 by a Medway pilot, Captain Stanley Coe, who designed

the first inflatable coat – a three-quarter-length black coat with

a built-in, orally-inflated lifejacket. This Mariner design, which

company that Flintwear, the can still be found – labelled as

contracted to – was soon incorporated as standard safety equipment for Trinity House SeaSafe became

pilots. If a pilot goes overboard the entire coat inflates, with lifting beckets front and back.Pilots may no longer be working

under government control, but many still wear modern versions of the Mariner – Associated British Ports (ABP) is SeaSafe’s largest

commercial customer. Other big-name customers include the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Royal National Lifeboat

Institution, which has the Hypohoist MOB recovery on all the new Shannon class lifeboats.Many of the products SeaSafe

sells today are ‘an evolution of the original Mariner coat’, with spin-offs including bomber jacket and gilet styles, some with mesh

backs for hot locations such as New Caledonia. The removable covers of the i-Zip and Pro-Zip range of lifejackets, launched

around six years ago, have enabled SeaSafe to offer an embroidery service without

damaging the lung, which is under a protective layer of fabric certificated to ISO12402.Wendy said: ‘We’ve done some
absolutely stonking embroidery. People send us a jpeg of the design, we match up the colours and the sewing machine does
the work. Digitising a logo has a one-off charge, and if the customer comes back in the future they don’t pay a digitising
charge for that design.’hers’ lifejacket embroidery, such as ‘John and Sue’, along with A common request is ‘his and
the boat name: ‘We do that very, very regularly’, says Wendy. ‘Embroidery also helps to give corporate identity, and when
lifejackets are numbered and allocated it cuts down on theft.’evolution, and we experiment all Wendy said: ‘It’s been a real
the time with new colours. The Union Jack print we brought out in 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee year is still extremely popular,
Managing director Jeremy Dale and general manager Keith Friar wear SeaSafe’s latest Mariner coats and hold up the original model especially with the resurgence of UK-made products. Selva Marine recently asked if we could do the