LIVEABOARD LIFEBOAT
How two architecture students converted a former lifeboat into their dream cruiser
The shriek of an alarm shatters the darkness, howling wind whips your face and lashing rain has you shivering to the core, then the call to abandon ship rings through the night sending jolts of adrenaline coursing through your veins. Staring out into the black abyss of broiling sea, your only choice is to step into the bleak darkness of the lifeboat and make a bid for survival.
For most of us, this chilling scenario would be our only experience of a ship’s lifeboat – and it is thankfully an uncommon occurrence. For hundreds of seafaring years, the lifeboat has been considered a seaman’s last resort, but for two British architects a decommissioned lifeboat was the gateway to an incredible adventure.
In 2018, friends Guylee Simmonds and David Schnabel bought a 100-person survival lifeboat and spent just over a year transforming the utilitarian vessel with a mission to take it on an epic 5,000km, four-month cruise from the Sussex coast to the Arctic Circle.
Guylee and David, both 28, met while studying architecture at Cardiff University and had always dreamt of embarking on a big adventure. “The
trip initially started out as an extended hiking trip. Norway was a place where we could enjoy all of our favourite outdoor pursuits, from skiing and kite surfing to hiking and camping, then things rather snowballed,” says Guylee.
Guylee became inspired to take their trip seaward after seeing a small, partially converted lifeboat on the upper reaches of the Thames. “I was immediately taken with this extremely functional boat being used for a different purpose. As an architect, I had been interested in making homes in unusual spaces and we were really drawn to the idea of taking something that was at the end of its service life and totally reinventing it. The more I thought about it the more I realised doing our Norway trip in a boat was a no-brainer – and a lifeboat could be the ultimate expedition vessel,” Guylee continues.
“I quickly discovered lifeboats were very affordable as boats go and as far as we could tell, no one had done an extended sea trip in a boat converted in the way we were imagining.”
The duo set about finding their vessel of choice and discovered the MV Clansman No 1 Lifeboat for sale online. Built by Norsafe in 1997, the 100-man lifeboat had been stationed aboard the Calmac Clansman ferry in the western isles of Scotland. The 35ft 1in (10.7m) long, 10ft 5in (3.2m) wide MV Clansman No 1 Lifeboat fit their criteria and in a closed bidding process, David and Guylee submitted an offer of £7,000 and won. The lifeboat was theirs and would need to be picked up a week later.
The guys hurriedly arranged road transport from Scotland and in early March 2018, the lifeboat arrived in Lochin Marine shipyard near Newhaven.
The novice owners renamed the lifeboat
Stødig, meaning ‘steady’ or ‘reliable’ in
Norwegian, and started the refit straight away. Alongside their freelance architecture work,
David and Guylee spent every available hour during weekends and evenings working on Stødig and calling in help from willing friends.
While David had very little boating experience, Guylee hails from a family of keen sailors. “I’m actually the third generation of my family to have some sort of boat in Newhaven. I always remember going down there when I was a kid my grandfather had an old wooden boat that never left the harbour and was always sort of an ongoing project. My father and uncle were both in the Navy and I grew up sailing off the coast of Brittany and in the Channel.”
A YEAR IN THE MAKING
“Stødig is the first motor boat in the family, and yes, that was a small point of family contention!
“Our total budget was £30,000, which included the purchase of the boat. This meant we really needed to do most of the work ourselves – from the plumbing and the electrics to the carpentry and internal linings. One benefit of this is that we know the boat inside and out, which has paid dividends. We have such an intimate knowledge of her design and build that it has enabled us to troubleshoot en route in a way that we really wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.”
The duo gave themselves a year for the refit
– no mean feat when trying to transform a workmanlike, industrial lifeboat into a comfortable liveaboard cruiser.
“Our first task was dismantling the dozen fibreglass benches that divided up the interior. Then we set to work on making a cockpit. If your ferry sinks off the coast of Scotland in a storm and you are evacuated by lifeboat, understandably you’d probably like to be fully enclosed and as safe as possible. For our purposes, though, we wanted some external space where we could introduce a primary access door into the boat, store ropes and fenders, fish from and step into off the quayside,” Guylee explains.
Guylee and David spent hours designing and building the small sunken cockpit, cutting out a section of the superstructure at the stern and
The boat was named Stødig, meaning ‘steady’ or ‘reliable’ in Norwegian
learning how to fibreglass along the way. Inside, they split the bow space into two compact doubles, with a wood burner (key for the cold Arctic winter off grid) at the entrance to the two cabins. Their saloon comprises a galley to starboard and a seating area and table to port, which converts into an occasional double berth, and in place of the lifeboat’s former tarpaulin side covers, the architects designed new curved acrylic side windows.
“We were planning a journey to one of the most spectacular parts of the world and wanted to have great views out to experience the majesty of the fjords and mountains,” Guylee explains, adding that the design and build of the windows was the most stressful and one of the most expensive parts of the entire refit.
Opposite a compact bathroom, Stødig has two more small bunks, before steps that ascend into a wheelhouse. Using nearly 35 litres of paint, the former orange industrious lifeboat was also painted bright yellow – in part to ensure no one felt the need to rescue them.
As interest built in the project, the owners’ budget was bolstered by some welcome sponsorship.
“Initially we didn’t imagine that we would have a lot of luck with sponsors or crowdfunding so our original specification was much more modest than what we have ended up with. In the end, we probably spent about £20,000 of our own money on the boat, we crowdfunded about £10,000 and a lot of the high value products such as the electrical system and solar panels were donated. Sunflare was one of the first businesses to reach out to us and were keen to work with us.”
SOLAR SELF-SUFFICIENCY
The pair outfitted the boat with lightweight stick-on solar panels from Sunflare with the aim of powering domestic utilities and remaining self-sufficient for weeks at a time. And it worked – by day 67 of their voyage to Norway, they had only plugged in to shorepower four times.
“The boat has 900 watts of solar panels across the roof and two 12-volt batteries on board. One battery handles the engine starter, navigation and winches, the other the domestic bank, including refrigerator, the composting toilet, toaster, the kettle, the power tools, laptops and so on,”
Guylee explains.
“The main appeal of the Sunflare system,” David adds, “was that the panels were flexible and looked very smart. And we’ve been able to keep our batteries topped up even in low light.”
“While jobs such as building under-locker storage were quite fiddly, by comparison, the installation of the solar panels was surprisingly straightforward and only took two or three days in total,” Guylee says.
Stødig also sports a small wind turbine and the crew can harness some electric power from the diesel engine if needed. “Most of the time when we get to shore we don’t even plug in. When we are in an anchorage, totally off grid, that’s when life on board is at its best,” Guylee adds.
After a few shakedown cruises and more fettling, Guylee and David were ready to depart. Internally there were still jobs to complete, but the pair decided to do these en route as good weather windows were limited.
In May 2019, Guylee, David and Shackleton, Guylee’s trusty Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, set off for northern Norway from Newhaven.
With a cruising speed of 6 knots, Stødig and her crew of three crossed the Channel in fine weather, before heading up the Belgian and Dutch coastlines, picking through the Dutch inland waterways before weaving up to the German Frisian Islands.
While undeniably safe and robust, a lifeboat would be most seafarer’s last choice for a long-leg cruise; seaworthy, but seakindly? Not so much.
“Obviously they are known for rolling,” Guylee says. “But we actually found her very comfortable. We added a lot of ballast in the keel to stabilise it. We were very careful about our passage planning and opted for inland routes where we could.
Being a former sailor, tactical examination of the weather was second nature, still, doing this for a lifeboat did mean taking passage planning to another level to ensure we caught the most favourable sea states possible.
“At sea she holds course quite well. On a repeat refit, we would definitely spec an autopilot though! The close-quarter handling was more of a challenge. It’s a bit like manoeuvring a large bus when you’re used to manoeuvring a Mini. With a yacht you can pivot the vessel around its keel but there’s no pivot point on a lifeboat and we don’t have thrusters.
“That said, we navigated through the Dutch canals for a week, we have been into a lot of the busiest marinas in Northern Europe and we didn’t have any incidents.”
Their journey took them through the Kiel Canal and then further north to the islands of Denmark before tracing up the archipelagos on Sweden’s west coast.
In Denmark, they began to have trouble with the 20-year-old, three-cylinder Lister Petter diesel engine. At one point towed into port by the
Coastguard, delays ensued as the team waited for parts. Still, on a voyage of some 5,000km, lady luck can’t always be on your side.
“The hairiest passage was an extremely rough crossing of the Skagerrak between Sweden and Norway,” recalls Guylee. “We caught the tail end of a rather big storm and Stødig fought her way through turbulent four-metre waves which, on a lifeboat that only draws 80 centimetres, was not particularly comfortable. Lifeboats are tested in far worse conditions so though we had every confidence our home was up to it, we were very glad to reach dry land.”
The boat reached Norway in late June 2019 and it was here that David and Guylee felt their vision for Stødig was truly fulfilled.
“We found the most incredible anchorages – remote, peaceful and uninhabited – slung a rope around a tree stump or a rock and would BBQ on the water’s edge in splendid isolation with the most extraordinary scenery surrounding us.
“We could also reach spectacular waterways in
Stødig, behind islands and in the fjords and explore passages that would be inaccessible to vessels with deeper drafts. Also knowing you have nearly an inch of fibreglass between you and the sea, compared to a quarter of an inch in a sailing yacht, gives you a lot of confidence when it
We caught the tail end of a big storm and Stødig fought her way through four-metre waves
comes to sitting on the bottom or mooring up against cliff faces and navigating through Norway’s rocky and narrow passages,” Guylee says.
WINTERING IN THE ARCTIC
They crossed the Arctic Circle, weaved further up the Norwegian coast and reached Tromsø, situated 70° north, in September
2019, where they planned to overwinter.
The friends spent their time exploring more waterways and hiking and skiing before the dark Arctic winter set in.
When spring returns this year the plan is to venture further north. “There are some mountains to the north you can only reach by boat which we would like to hike and ski. Then in summer 2020 we are making plans to head further north round towards the Russian border and explore the area of Finnmark,” continues Guylee.
“A lot of the satisfaction from this trip comes from the fact we’ve done the work, the design and the build ourselves and can travel thousands of miles with relatively few issues.
“One of the reasons we’ve been able to take this extended adventure is that we’re both self employed. The speed (or lack of!) of our voyage has often meant that whilst one is at the helm, the other can sit below and get stuck into some work,” he explains.
“After another magical summer on board, I guess we’ll have to assess whether we want to do another adventure on her or whether Stødig needs a new home and new people to take her on more exciting voyages of their own.”
We reached spectacular waterways; behind the islands, in the fjords