Modern History

Southport Lifeboat was reformed following accidents off the coast where local men lost their lives. After the accidents in 1987, bereaved relatives started a campaign to bring a lifeboat back to Southport. In December 1988 the first boat since 1925 came on station at Southport.

She was a 6 metre Carson rigid inflatable, originally powered by twin 40HP Mariner outboards, but refitted in 1995 with a single 85HP Suzuki and a 10HP auxiliary engine. She has self righting capability, integral fuel tanks and a top speed of around 30 knots. She was named the “Geoff Clements” after one of the young men who perished in the 1987 accidents and remained on station until she became the reserve Lifeboat in May 1995 when the Bessie Worthington came on station. Delta Power Services at Stockport were happy to manufacture a 6.6 metre RIB to Southport Lifeboat’s requirements and meeting all the necessary specifications, e.g. SOLAS (The international organisation for Safety of Life at Sea).

The boat was originally powered by twin 90HP Suzuki outboard engines. These were changed to 90HP Mariners in 1998. The charity has always had three motors to enable a quick swap should one go down. This means that the lifeboat was rarely off station.
The Delta had full self righting capability. The crew can activate the self righting bag and sea anchor by pull handles on the outside of the transom. Delta were responsible for supplying all the electrics and navigation systems (GPS Radio, echo sounder, EPIRB).

Fuel was stored in 4 x 20 Gallon under deck tanks, giving a duration at sea in the order of 7 hours. Fuel consumption, in a typical mix of getting to a casualty area and executing search patterns, is about 3.5 gallons per hour per engine. There is a double transom that forms the outboard well, rather than the open transom used by the RNLI Atlantic RIBs.

During the years following the millennium we added 2 quad bikes & an ex RNLI D Class to our kit. The bikes are invaluable for fast response and for searching large areas of beach quickly. The D class allows an alternative for searching the shallow waters north of Southport Pier as well as providing invaluable backup to the main boat.

In 2005 a campaign was launched to replace the Delta. We set an ambitious target of raising £125,000 for a Halmatic Arctic 24. By September 2006 enough money had been raised to commission Halmatic to start building the boat. Unfortunately whilst the money was being raised the price had gone up and by the time delivery was made the boat had cost around £140,000. The Heather White came into service in May 2007.

In June 2008 the 2 quad bikes were replaced by new Honda 500cc. At the same time we added mud rescue equipment to our armoury.