Supacat provides rescue remedy

Manufacturing a vehicle that can launch an 18-tonne lifeboat in minutes and be fully submersed under 9m of water was always going to be a challenge. But after nine years of development, vehicle maker Supacat is getting ready to put the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s (RNLI’s) Launch & Recovery System (L&RS) into production.

The system comprises an automated hydraulic tractor and carriage in the familiar RNLI orange and blue, designed to carry the Shannon-class lifeboat to the water’s edge at beach sites without a launch jetty. Once a mission has been completed, the boat can be picked up from a beached position and turned around ready for relaunch within about five minutes.

Even for a company used to dealing with very specific requirements, Devon-based Supacat faced a particularly tricky set of issues it hadn’t tackled before in the L&RS, not least because the design was such an upgrade of the RNLI’s existing system. But with some inventive engineering and contributions from a largely British supply chain, the company was able to make this unique vehicle a practical reality.