The Western Joint Branch of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) and the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) Design Challenge 2017 was won by a University of Southampton team comprising of two Ship Science students and a Mechanical Engineering student.  The team of three met whilst working as interns at BMT in Bath during the summer.  They struck up a friendship and decided to enter the competition.

The design brief was to design a life boat capable of rescuing up to 1000 people from the sea at once, in response to the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.  “Team Wessex” was made up of James Lamyman (Part 2 Ship), Edward Wilson (Part 4 Mech) and Paloma Medina (Part 4 Ship) who was the team leader.  Their mentor was Paul Nichols from Lloyd’s Register.  The competition involved preparing a Poster and presenting their design concept at an event held on the 4th December at the University of the West of England.
“Team Wessex” were crowned champions from a group of 6 entrants, two from BMT, one from each of SSMG, Stellar Systems, MoD DESG and “Team Wessex”, who walked off with the £1000 first prize.
Paloma said “Sometimes it was challenging to combine University work and the lifeboat design work but we learned a lot from it and it was worth it. It was like doing a second concept design.”  Part 3 Ship Science students do a concept design as part of their degree.
The entry from “Team Wessex” was a 65m monohul with various innovative rescue capabilities:

 
 
 
 
 

• It can seat 1000 people
• The vessel concept includes a well deck at stern for rescuing the ribs in which refugees tend to travel or collect the boats rescue ribs when they carry rescuees.
• Two high speed ribs at both sides launched,
• Side platforms which can be lowered to the water for rescuing purpose
• Vessel design integrates a processing system for rescues.