Practical Boat Owner - January 2016

Gear

SeaSafe’s sales office was originally based in Chatham Dockyard and its manufacturing facility was based on the Isle of

Wight, but now the entire company is based on the island. ‘Everything is designed here, manufactured here and

marketed from here. I’ve had the company for 25 years,’ says Jeremy. ‘One of our plans for our

golden anniversary year is to educate the public about what we do. As a bespoke manufacturer we can

accommodate small or large orders, it doesn’t have to be all commercial. We were the first, as far as we’re aware, to

change covers.’had one of the first lifejackets to SeaSafe also claims to have

qualify under the new 12402 regulation system. The lifejacket range includes fireproof fabric for service welders, while the

MOB recovery range includes the award-winning Hypo Hoist, which raises a casualty horizontally. The Hypo Hoist was

designed by 17-year-old student Tanya Budd as an

A-level project. Jeremy said: ‘Tanya couldn’t find anyone to manufacture it. We helped her

and helped with the final design. We paid her a commission and then she wanted to be bought out, so now it’s a SeaSafe

product through and through.RIB hoist, a way of doing very ‘From that we designed the

simple recovery one-on-one, and the Quiksling – all made in-house. You can throw the Quiksling quite a long way

very easily. It’s best suited to commercial vessels, although you could also use a halyard on a yacht to hoist it back in. It

comes with a solar light.’Flectalon Rescue Blankets are popular with mountain rescue Meanwhile, SeaSafe’s

teams and crew on commercial vessels, who use them to wrap up casualties recovered from water. Jeremy added: ‘It’s a

standard range but we can do

bespoke, as we did for a superyacht owned by well-known football manager.’General manager Keith Friar

joined SeaSafe when it was based in a shed in Wooten: ‘When the high tide came in we had to move all of the machines

up. It was a nice setting though, right by the water’s edge.’SeaSafe moved to

1997, originally two single-storey shops merged into one. When larger premises in Birmingham Road in

the shops and local cinema were knocked down to make flats, SeaSafe moved out for a year- and-a-half to Spencer Thetis

Wharf, returning in 2002 to Birmingham Road ‘to a brand- new facility designed for us’.

SeaSafe’s Golden history – 50 years of production

We’ve been going for 50 years, so we must be doing something right. We’re very

passionate about our business’

SeaSafe service manager Matt Barry with the collection point boxes

All lifejacket lungs are inflated for 12 hours during the servicingour own lifejackets and about
1,500 bespoke coats, plus many individual orders of between one and 30 items.’Once cut, the two halves of the
lung are welded together. The original lungs for the Mariner coat were glued together by hand, but now it’s fusion welding, where two
brass shapes are placed above and below the lungs, which are heated to melt the fabric together. At least one in every 90 lungs is
tested to destruction with a double inflation. Wendy said: ‘Everything has to be quality-checked and everything has a serial number
and bar code, because if we ever have to isolate faulty material we need to know which serial numbers to isolate. The lifejacket
lungs are inflated for 12 hours, and we had a situation in the past

where they were just exploding: really loud, it was! That was a faulty batch of material, but it’s better that we find out here than have it

happen out in the big wide world.’where the lungs are inflated with one gas bottle and then another. There’s also a double bottle test

Wendy said: ‘All our lifejackets are 150N but they’re manufactured to a tested buoyancy of 170N.’After the lifejacket and coat

material is cut by hand, it’s stitched together by machinists such as Chris Russell, who laughed at the idea people might think lifejackets

are entirely machine-made, saying: ‘It takes a lot of experience to put it all together. It’s become far more complicated over the years, with

more technical parts coming along.’ around the factory saying “fit, form, Jeremy added: ‘We have signs

function”: nothing should get changed in any system without being signed off, but if suspicions are raised they should ask. We

have various disciplines throughout the whole business, but for that we’re all human. However, making mistakes is a little bit different if

you’re making lifejackets.’Easy servicingThere are 50 SeaSafe lifejacket

service points around the UK, primarily chandlers and marinas – and the company is looking for more. Customers drop lifejackets

off into the blue collection boxes, and the service points call SeaSafe to arrange carriage. Once the lifejackets have been

collected and serviced, SeaSafe then contacts the customers to organise payment and sends the lifejacket back to the service point.

the service points they don’t pay any carriage, just for the servicing and parts from £9.95.’ She added: Wendy said: ‘If customers use

‘A lot of marinas are signing up: they get a small amount of commission, maybe earning about £50 or £60 they wouldn’t