By Mike Brain
Thursday afternoon and following another trip to to Lymington Matt & Hugh were finally able to deliver the new Safety Boat to Colemere.
The Boat is a French built (hence the cosmopolitan header) Rigiflex with a 25 h.p engine, in bright orange and we are going to have blue lettering!
As you can see from the attached photos It was thoroughly inspected and rigorously tested, Both by Matt & Hugh but also by our Coxswain Pete Williams who played no small part in the research into types of boat and to source and selection.
I eventually was allowed to have a go! and can assert that it is indeed a superb bit of kit. Its Fast , very manoeuvrable at low speed, extremely stable and with an incredible amount of room in it. A quantum leap forward for safety at the Club.
At this point I think I should point out that everything about the boat is different to the Old one, and it is imperative that every OOD should get familiarised with the boat BEFORE they do a duty and potentially have to assist someone in the water.
The Club Owes a collective vote of thanks to Hugh & Matt who have made 2 trips to the south coast , first to test drive it , and then to collect and deliver and to Pete Williams for all the work he has done on sourcing the boat.
Photos attached of various Test Drivers and showing the extent of the new jetty in front of the controll box. The commodore has asked me to point out that water skiing is definitely excluded from our lease of the lake!!
Mike Brain
Solo 4651
The official time trial is across the line at Limit, round Island & back to limit. The old boat took 2 mins (with a good run-up at the start). Do we have a new record yet?
Very impressive- well done all those concerned in making this happen.
Thanks for a great day Rob,Tom and crew of ood’s